Laura Moore, Nintendo Gameboy Tetris, 2021 (front), second-hand clothes, recycled fabric, and 100% cotton. Photo: LFDocumentation

Laura Moore: Memories of the Future

January 16 – March 15, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 18, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Panel Discussion: Wednesday, February 26, 5:30 pm
McIntosh Gallery, Western University, London, ON

Curated by Adam Lauder

What will observers make of our discarded devices 1,000 years from now? Laura Moore’s timely meditations on the wastefulness of planned electronic obsolescence address an imagined future audience. The first mid-career survey of Moore’s practice, Memories of the Future brings together several bodies of work across various media ranging from quilts to sculpture, mosaic, and drawing. These diverse works are united in their exploration of the ephemerality of technologically-mediated memory in an era of digital disposability.

Born in Chatham, Moore has longstanding connections to London and Southwestern Ontario – her early art education was at Fanshawe College and her grandfather was a Chatham stonemason. Moore’s works carry this familial inheritance in their ambition to monumentalize the ordinary in the tradition of anonymous artisans of the past. But the familiar environments memorialized by Moore are resolutely contemporary: the handheld game consoles and mobile phones of a still tangible past, as well as circuit boards salvaged from the curbside.

Foregrounding the paradox that devices created to externalize and preserve memory come into existence already imperilled by disposability, the artist proposes nonlinear models of time and memory. Moore observes that, “somebody can look at something and see the past and the future at the same time.” Such a Janus-faced temporality is evident in, for example, the artists’ use of the ancient medium of mosaic to cast media in an eerie future anterior. Similarly, the coiled outlines of Moore’s hyperrealist drawings of ancient ruins recall her three-dimensional representations of silicon circuit boards. Collectively, Moore’s work challenges us to consider how both our past and future are intricately connected to the devices that have become virtual extensions of our own bodies and personas – until the moment that we discard and replace them in a never-ending cycle.

Related Programming

Opening Reception
Saturday, January 18, 2:00 – 4:00 pm

Artist Laura Moore and Curator Adam Lauder will be in attendance for the opening celebration of Memories of the Future. Remarks will take place at 2:30. Complimentary after hours parking available in select campus lots.

Panel Discussion: Alissa Centivany, Laura Moore, and Kirsty Robertson
Wednesday, February 26, 5:30 pm

Please join us for an engaging and enlightening panel discussion with Dr. Alissa Centivany, artist Laura Moore, and Dr. Kirsty Robertson as they address subjects such as memory, technology and waste, planned obsolescence, and the right to repair.

Dr. Alissa Centivany is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University working on technology policy, law, and ethics. She holds a PhD in Information and a JD specializing in intellectual property and technology law.

Dr. Kirsty Robertson is Director of Museum and Curatorial Studies and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Curating in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University. Dr. Robertson is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, focusing on research into waste, pollution, the climate crisis, and the development of exhibitions and artworks with low carbon footprints.

About the Artist

Laura Moore (b.1979) is a Toronto-based, multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in sculpture. Moore works primarily in stone, although her practice extends into drawing, wood, mould-making and textiles. Notable exhibitions and outdoor public installations include Picture Stones in Bergen, Norway (2024), Love Languages at Art Windsor Essex, Windsor (2024), Erratic Behaviour at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Canada (2024), Memory Bathing at OpenArt Biennale, Örbero Sweden (2022), Memory Sticks, Baneheia & Odderøya, Kristiansand, Norway (2022), Replika/Replica at Babel Visningsrom for Kunst, Norway (2017) and Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark (2015). The artist is a transient member of Studio Pescarella in Pietrasanta, Italy and recently attended the USF Verftet residency in Bergen, Norway in 2024. She holds an MFA from York University and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work is in the collections of the Royal Bank of Canada, the Bank of Montreal, TD Bank, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, RIMOWA, Bell Canada, The Body Shop and numerous private collections.

McIntosh Gallery
1151 Richmond Street
London, ON N6A 3K7
mcintoshgallery.ca
mcintoshgallery@uwo.ca
(519) 661-3181

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Saturday: 12 – 4pm
Sundays and Holidays: Closed
McIntosh Gallery offers free admission to all exhibitions and events

Accessibility:
We regret that McIntosh Gallery is not wheelchair accessible.