Biography
 

LAURA J. PADGETT
 

Summary

Laura J. Padgett is an artist who also works in the field of art history. Throughout the years she has combined these two areas in her work as docent, writer and curator. It is this balance between the practical and theoretical sides of the art - historical coin that has served her when creating work, preparing exhibitions and when writing or speaking about art.

Laura Padgett’s Artistic philosophy

My work is about my relationship to the world. I use the camera to find and record things. My method has developed over the years, the images I create becoming more and more dense with time. This density is produced through means that are intrinsic to the camera, the medium of photography and in many ways film. Reflections, transparency and shadows become tactile; windows become barriers, holding the viewer off while creating another visual layer; these layers mesh into complex images that tell stories. Sometimes I add short phrases or sentences to augment the stories the photographs tell. My work makes things visible that are often overlooked. It has nothing to do with tricks, yet everything to do with perception.

Artist

1981-present

In 1981 Laura left the U.S. for Germany where she has worked as an artist since. Outside of learning the language during the first few years, she worked on short films and photography. Two of the 16mm films she completed, Fragment and Hildegard of Bingen were both shown at the Oberhausen short film festival with other showings in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Bern, New York, Sydney, Vienna, Bologna, Barcelona and Madrid. Hildegard of Bingen received an award from the 43^rd Film/Video Festival in Montecatini Terme. Since finishing the film "Hildegard of Bingen" in 1990 she has focused on photography, which has come to be has her main medium, concentrating on the relationship between image and text. In the meantime she has begun to work with digital video, making short documentaries and work that is closely related to her photography. Her films are often considered to be photographic, her photographs filmic.

Since the late eighties, Laura has participated in international group exhibitions, for example Prospect '96, Photography in Contemporary Art, Frankfurt Kunstverein and Schirn Kunsthalle, curated by Peter Weiermair, and fototexttextfoto that traveled from the Frankfurt Kunstverein to the Museum of Modern Art Bozen/Bolzano concluding at the Fotomuseum Winterthur. In 1997 she curated the group exhibition essential byproducts that was shown in Haus am Luetzowplatz, Berlin. She exhibited in the group show “Desire” at the Ursula Blickle Foundation in 2001, which then went on to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna the following year. In 2002 she participated in the exhibition Heimat Kunst in the House of World Cultures in Berlin. In 2004 her work was presented in the exhibit Relating to Photography, Highlights from Private Collections, at the Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt am Main. Her film „Fragment“ was shown at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2006. In 2007 she exhibited her photographs from the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library at the Franckesche Foundation in Halle and participated in the online documenta magazine plattform in conjunction with the journal Archplus. Last year, her work could also be seen at the Galleries Seitz & Partner in Berlin and Martina Detterer in Frankfurt and at the 7^th Architectural Biennial in Sao Paulo. This year her work will be presented in the exhibition Arch / Scapes at the Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel, and in 2009 and 2010 she will be participating in the group show “Flawless, Images for the 21^st Century” at the Kunsthalle Erfurt und Kunstmuseum Ahlen.

A selection of her of her solo exhibitions include, KunstRaum - Klaus Hinrichs, Trier, Goethe Institute, Warsaw, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar, all 1999. In 2003 she exhibited the results of a London residency at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, in 2004 a new series of work at the Gallery Martina Detterer, also in Frankfurt. In October 2005 she presented a new body of work at Galerie Seitz & Partner in Berlin and in January 2006 she exhibited an overview of five years’ work at the Odakule Art Gallery in Istanbul.

 Book and Public Art Projects

Laura has completed several projects for work in public spaces. In 1995 she created a photography-text work as a permanent installation at the finance offices in Frankfurt am Main. In 2003 her photo-text series “morning glories” was permanently installed in a Hessian detective unit. As one of the artists’ proposals selected by a jury in 2006, she realized photo-text works for three family courtrooms for the new justice building in Darmstadt. In the summer of 2005 she photographed Peter Zumthor’s newly built studio residence. These photographs were published in his book of essays “Thinking Architecture”[i] in 2006.

Fellowships

Summer 2004 - Artist in Residency

Studio exchange Program between Frankfurt and Burgdorf, Switzerland

2001-2002 - Artist in Residency

Studio Fellowship in London from the Hessian Cultural Foundation

1996-97 - Artist in Residency

Kuenstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad Ems

Laura has also been a member of the selection committees for; the Hessian Cultural Foundation’s travel and residency grants for 2005/06, the Kuenstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad Ems in 1999 and 2000, for an architectural students' prize, financed by the German Industrial Group - BDI (Bund Deutsche Industrie) in 1996 and for the Frankfurt Film Show in 1991.

Lecturer in Art Theory and Photography at the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung, Offenbach am Main 2003 - 2007

In 2003 Laura was invited to teach at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach am Main. She began with a review of Feminist Film Theory. Classical texts were examined, as well as newer essays regarding gender and film. Discussing the transformation of film theory among young practitioners aided students in gaining historical references and contexts for their work. During the following two semesters Laura concentrated on the theory of digital photography. As digital photography has become practically the standard tool, Laura chose to work with students positioning digital photography as a media of its own. Texts by Wolfgang Hagen, Friedrich Kittler, Abigail Solomon-Godeau and Herta Wolff, for example, were analyzed. Her most recent seminar considered the relationship of art and politics in which Jacques Rancière’s “The Politics of Aesthetics” was analyzed in conjunction with ideas of art production.

Lecturer in Art Theory at the Art Academy of the Johann Gutenberg-University, Mainz 2001 - 2002

In the summer semesters of 2001 and 2002 Laura was invited to lecture in art theory at the Art Academy of the Johann Gutenberg-University in Mainz. While in Mainz she concentrated on theories regarding the processes of art making, analyzing with students such texts as “Art as Experience” by John Dewey and “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace” by Arthur C. Danto.

Member of the Editorial Staff of "Frauen und Film"

2000- present

Frauen und Film, established in 1975, has gone from discussing feminist positions in the seventies to the relationship of film as an artistic medium as compared to new media. As a member of the editorial staff Laura develops themes and topics for each individual volume, chooses authors and edits incoming texts, gives interviews and writes criticism. Together with Heike Klippel she was the editor responsible for the newest issue, Nr. 65 “Celluloid & Co.”.

Faculty Member of the Bauhaus University-Weimar for Photography

1994-99

During her tenure at the Bauhaus University-Weimar Laura rebuilt the darkroom facilities for the architecture department after German reunification. She established a curriculum for architecture students involved in photography, organized lecture series on architectural photography with international speakers and prepared exhibitions of student work that were shown in and outside university spaces. She planned and accompanied group trips to important photography collections, for example the Folkwang Museum in Essen or to such historically relevant places as the Bauhaus in Dessau. One semester project that considered the photograph in its relationship to print media resulted in a book of students' photographs published by the Bauhaus University-Weimar. Laura offered a diverse photography instruction to students and broadened the spectrum of education in the department.

Lecturer in Art Theory and Photography at the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung, Offenbach am Main

1990-1992

While teaching at the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung, Laura introduced students to the writing of Anglo-Saxon art theorists and journalists such as Clement Greenberg, Harald Rosenberg, John Berger, Lucy Lippard, Barbara Rose and Susan Sontag as well as Craig Owens, Douglas Crimp, and Mary Kelly. Further she taught a course on the relationship between word and image, as well as an introduction to Nelson Goodman's theory of art, working with his texts “Languages of Art” and "Ways of Worldmaking".

Education

Masters in Art History, 1994

Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University

Film Studies, 1983-85

Two and a half year further education fine arts program, concentrating on film and photography at the Staedelschule Art Academy (Hochschule fuer Bildende Kunst), Frankfurt am Main

Bachelor of Fine Arts, 1980

Pratt Institute of Art and Design, Brooklyn, New York

Ford Foundation Scholar, 1978