Wednesday Visitor - Laura Yulie

Laura Yulie

London based artist, Laura Yulie is originally from Glasgow and she experiments with videography and ready made art. She combines this with disused items such as soap, salt and other discarded household items to give them meaning and a different outlook. She explained her art journey, gaining a BA-hons Fine art in Glasgow and then an MFA at Goldsmiths in London once she had moved there. She has done both exhibitions and commissions outside her residency on the London city island. This was the main influence for her work because it showed a serious issue with new developments in the UK. It is aimed to be the Manhattan island of London and is aimed at multi millionaires. She sees this as an issue due to the housing crisis we currently have in England. Proving demand for the rich above the rest of the population. However, some space has to be allocated by for artists and creative businesses by law. Property developers are fast tracking the process, ignoring the usual gradual route. Studio owners, like Laura, are told by the developers to tidy up if their window is on show to the streets and public spaces because it will put off the investors and millionaires who are the target audience. In response she created "Big wall, little wall",pebble dashed surveillance technology that shows two aspects of a normal city and not the fake, perfect desirable ones they're trying to create. The resources she collects from skips or online cheaply and the pebble dash off the firm that is constructing the City Island project. Showing it frozen in its broken and misused state.   

Another project she created was a film showing the ideal target market for these developments and the contrasting majority of the population. She used the stock video from the City Island project and overlayed her own clips of a heavily tattooed man. This illustrated the opposite to who they're aiming at, even though his appearance can be misleading. In the film she used images of street art that has been commissioned for certain city areas to make them more attractive and seem "edgy and creative" to the younger generations. She believes that this is the wrong use of art and is actually fraud due to the graffiti artists doing it for free, but the developers in a way frame it and take it as their own. 

Carrying on with her style of pebble dashing objects, she worked off the theme of a local standing out from their background. Manikins have changed how the product is communicated through the shop front windows. Just like us through our phones. The last project she explained was how she used fridges and people to show that us humans waste billions in money and food each year due to lack of knowledge and consumerism telling us whats safe and what to buy instead. Overall she helped me as I was in the process of the 3D project where I had to create ready made art. she gave me ideas of what types of objects and materials that can be used.