Laura Skehan Tecnica: Photo Anno: 2021 Dimensione: 90 x 60 cm Descrizione: A breath (2021) was taken near Seltún, in southwest Iceland, a golden moment of silence at a hot spring along the Seljalandsá River. Hot springs and rivers contain large amounts of dissolved minerals. Ancient versions of these springs and the minerals within them performed a key chemical reaction for early life on Earth. The historic and the ephemeral merged in that moment as I watched the steam rise in the golden light. I contemplated those ancient springs, what it must have been like the very moment before life emerged. Just then, a bus full of visitors arrived to explore the Seltún area.  

Laura Skehan Tecnica: Photo Anno: 2021 Dimensione: 90 x 60 cm Descrizione: What We’ve Seen was taken during my first visit to Reynisfjara Beach in Iceland while on residency SIM Residency in 2021. I look to the stories of the land and how they are translated to us, a dynamic language that is performed through movement, making, watching, listening. The beach is a famous volcanic black sand beach with ferociously strong waves… tourists have been known to tread too closely to the water and be pulled in by the combination of the heavy coarse sand and the power of the ocean. The landscape is phenomenal, and the dramatic power of the Atlantic Ocean allows the beach sheltered by the basalt formations to become a natural amphitheatre. My focus was of course on the rock face… Towering, undulating basalt columns, similar to the Giant Causeway, familiar to us at home. I thought about the stories this one had seen. The tragedies the rock face had witnessed in both human and more than human… the changing landscape, the influx of transient people to the south Icelandic coast. The damage that might do.. the reminder that the waves and the earth must be respected. I spent quite a bit of time in the freezing cold, watching and listening to how other people interacted with the landscape and dramatic exchanges between the human, the ocean and the rock face. While the work is about the exquisite detail and history of the geological phenomenon, I also like to think of it as a portrait of the rock as it watches the drama unfold in front of it, or behind the camera.  

Laura Skehan Tecnica: Photo Anno: 2024 Dimensione: 90 x 60 cm Descrizione: In 2024, I spent time working in the community garden at Moabit Stadtgarten city park while I was an artist in residence at ZK/U, Centre for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin. I observed the changes of light, the flowering of the plants and the fruit that followed , the insects and the creatures that explored this urban meadow, the wanted plants and the weeds, all eventually to decay when the winter would came. This cycle became symbolic and an opportunity to be reflective. The garden asking nothing of me, but to witness and to loose myself in thought. An opportunity to remember. I wrote constantly that summer. What presented in my scribbled notes were resolutions around missed opportunities, unfollowed dreams, first kisses, a longing for something (not quite sure what though), a fear of self-acceptance, resistance through joy and sharing, a recognition of the time passing, moments of boredom and of bliss. The stories and histories that were embedded with each plant, a shared mumbled moment in time. The hope of spring, the fruitful summer, the abundance of the harvest and a reflective period in Autumn to prepare for the long winter nights, hibernating, protecting... only to begin again. This work featured in the final exhibition INTERZONE at ZK/U, an exhibition exploring the parallels within culture and the diversity of the queer community and biodiversity of urban green space, particularly the contested spaces of community gardens as places of growth, memory and resistance.