Artist Statement

Laura Pollock is a contemporary artist and printmaker, her artworks focus on the landscapes and infrastructures of busy cities, through a palimpsest of imagery. Her practice engages with the constant development within the urban environment; it is a critique and expression of urbanism.
 
The artist layers a variety of images of city scenes and architecture, to create an abstract image, an architectural fantasy. Her work explores the themes of urban expansion, tourism, and utopian ideals. Pollock's earlier artworks explore the architecture within her home city of London but have most recently shifted to the city of Venice, one of the world's top tourist destinations, with between 26 million and 30 million visitors each year. She has visited Venice on two occasions, so was able to envisage and create imagery that reflected her personal response to the city, produced and reflected in a singular composite image created from combined imagery of urban scenes and architecture.
 
Her most recent series of artworks, presents Venice, as she perceives it to be. It does not depict the contrived picture-postcard image of one of the world's most popular tourist destinations. But instead shows and exposes Venice, a polluted city in an advanced state of structural deterioration and decay, which relies solely on tourism for its very existence. In the twelfth century, Venice was considered to be a Utopia, with a healthy, prosperous, burgeoning community. Sadly, however, it is now rapidly becoming a Dystopia. The government cannot provide sufficient funding for the day to day running of the city, let alone, the renovation of the antique palaces and churches. The population struggles to survive in a city that suffers from appalling pollution, massive overcrowding, and ever more frequent devastating floods. The very existence of this fragile, once beautiful city is now in doubt. The artist has chosen to depict Venice for what it truly is, a glorified dystopia.

In her black and white series, the stark reality of the monochromatic tones strips away and exposes the glossy, lurid representations fashioned by the travel industry, to seduce and attract tourists. Furthermore, she feels that monochromatic imagery, portrays a more gaunt and austere Venice, exposing the viewer to the suggestion of corruption, pollution and decay.

In Pollock's colour series, she wanted to explore the symbolism of certain colours, to introduce a new element to her work. For example, in one print, she chooses an orange hue. Of all the enduring colours that she associates with Venice, it is this one. The colour is to be found everywhere; not only in the architecture but also in the renders and paintwork, the tiled roofs and pavements. It is also the colour of rust, which is increasingly prevalent, as the city slides irrevocably into an advanced state of deterioration and decay. In a second, she uses a combination of red, yellow and black, to heighten awareness to the possibility of impending danger. In another print, she selected tones of blue and green. The aquatic colours represent the water that is the very lifeblood of Venice. The water that was literally its foundation, will also ultimately bring about its destruction. Additionally, this use of selective, heightened colour, which she has employed to communicate such a dark and serious topic, helps her to express the glorification of Venice, despite its decaying, dystopian state.