A Journey Around the Studio

<p>Laura Lamiel has been making work now for five decades. So in ways, the recent presence of her work in international contexts, or at least the inclusion of her work in biennials and her representation by young galleries with broad exposure, amounts to a rediscovery. That a private foundation in France has joined with the French Ministry of Culture in commissioning a text on Lamiel’s work – this fact alone gives some indication of what’s changed; if not in Lamiel’s work, then around it. It also suggests that Lamiel’s work has been underserved by writing in particular. So one of the things this essay will do is look at past writing about Lamiel’s work. It will at times spiral around or away from Lamiel’s work, because it could be said to lack context; it’s sometimes understood as being apart from its historical context, and in at least one case, it stands in complex relation to the discursive context proposed by an author: Anne Tronche, a French art critic and later employee at the Ministry of Culture who engaged with Lamiel’s work over many years. Hopefully, tracing this arc will allow us to speak both broadly and specifically about Lamiel’s production…</p>