Laura Dee Milnes

Laura Dee Milnes’ practice encompasses performance, sculpture, writing, image, music and research. Her assemblages of space, body and action are often enacted for viewers and/or participants in an invented space – a set, where action may or may not take place, an environment created by the artist as an expanded universe, or an invitation inside her thinking, to be experienced physically.

Laura considers herself to be her own object, and views her text as sculpture, her performance as space, and all of these things as her body. She invites others to inhabit this body of work, briefly, not merely to view it but to be part of it, always within boundaries she has consented to. She draws upon her extensive experience as a performer in the creation and delivery of her work, which is often irreverent and confrontational, but laden with humour and care. Part of Laura’s performance practice has often involved adopting various personas, who become ‘hosts’ in two senses of the word – they are a vessel for her and her body/voice, and they lubricate potentially awkward social situations.

Alongside her sculptural and performance practice, Laura also facilitates workshops and leisure activities in which conversations take place. Interactivity and person-to-person exchange are integral and she has created various installations within which communities are formed for brief moments.  More recently she has found that her installations become hosts, activated by the people who interact with them, with a little help from her, as co-host.