Artist

Laura Kikauka

Laura Kikauka's body of work over the past twenty-five years encompasses various mediums including site specific installation, mixed media, electronic sculpture, drawing, photography, video, performance, music, text and costume creations.

Kikauka's installations establish a highly specific visual (and often audio) language that blends the increasingly overlapping worlds of high and low art forms. In general Laura's ‘excessive aesthetic' is comparable to urban archeology and addresses issues of consumer culture, and the question of good and bad taste. It also celebrates failure in a humourous and ironic manner.

Kikauka's work is inspired and derived from decades of on-going collecting of found objects. Employing the formal strategy of meticulously sorting and organizing these objects, as well as modifying or transforming them, she then creates specifically themed and coded installations that transform gallery and exhibition spaces into densely packed, highly detailed installations.

Laura's categorization speaks of similarities and differences. The Funny Farm studios in rural Meaford and in Berlin are living and working spaces treated as on-going installations that exemplify, through a density of detail her interest in low class consumer culture. It is with a sense of sarcasm and empathy that she explores this reoccurring theme.

Artist Code: 257

Videography

Them Fucking Robots

1988, 02:50 minutes, colour

Terminally Ill

1987, 01:45 minutes, colour

Turquoise, Beige And Flesh

1986, 02:45 minutes, colour

Misplaced Affection

1985, 03:40 minutes, colour

Critical Writing

The Curatorial Incubator v.4: That 80s Show
by Lisa Steele. Toronto: Vtape, 2007.
Detonate!: (They Blew Up Real Good)
by Randi Spires. Fuse, Spring 1990, v. 13, no. 4.
Technology with a twisted aura
So Toronto Computes!, Dec. 1989, v. 5, no. 12.
Misplaced Affection: A Computer-Controlled Interactive Household...
by Laura Kikauka and Nancy Paterson. Leonardo, 1987, v. 20, no. 3.