Shrouds and Shroud Making with Blake Lawrence (11:30-1pm)

Blake Lawrence

Blake Lawrence is a queer Sydney-based artist working across wearable forms, performance, and digital and camera-less photography; most recently, the alchemical printing process of Cyanotype. His work addresses personal history, fantasy and spirituality, the queered and natural environment and sexuality. His work is deeply tied to the Australian landscape, particularly the estuaries and agricultural lowlands of his hometown Palmers Island, in Northern NSW, and those surrounding Sydney. He performs post-gender neo-burlesque locally, under the moniker Canoe, and is a member of the club costume/character duo, Wisteria Hysteria.

Drawing on the Byzantium and trans-cultural practice of shrouding and wrapping bodies in fabric, Blake Lawrence will share with you his artistic practice. A shared moment of intimate performance, immersion, resurrection and manifestation results in a warped and blurred impression of the subject. Enthographic photographic practices are subverted in this way with the masking of gender, age, ability, culture and other markers for identity. In their place, meteorological and biological impressions remain, hinting at time, place and environment as indexes for each portrait.