Laurence Causse-Parsley

Visual artist | France / UK

Born in France (1966), educated in Paris and Britain, Laurence lives in London. Her colorful urban compositions are created out of many memories rather than an exact depiction, expressing a very personal experience of the 21st century urban world. ⁠⁠ 

“My paintings are about colors and energy, about making sense of places and conditions in which we live, creating a pictorial language to communicate and exchange, hoping it will resonate with the viewers”

Portrait

Born in France (1966), educated in Paris and Britain, Causse-Parsley now lives in London. Since 2011, Laurence (LAC) has been working out of Make Space Studios in the London East End and she is part of the the Artists’ Pool. She takes part in regular group show and collaborative multi-disciplinary projects. Her most recent experience in December 2020 was to curate a 20-artist-strong group show in a reclaimed space in central London.

LAC’s first solo exhibition took place in India in 2003. Since then, her artist path has been guided by a daily commitment to studio work and collaborative projects from India to the UK, via Taiwan, Thailand, France, Italy and Japan.

From 2000 to 2010, she lived in Asia with her family. Mumbai’s Hacienda gallery in the Khala Godha district welcomed her first solo exhibition in 2003. Then followed six years in Thailand where she joined Bangkok’s art community, working with numerous galleries, while sharing her passion through painting workshops for children and adults. Before moving back to Europe, she was given the opportunity to decorate a Karen chapel in the Northern village of Maewe and her Paths series of paintings was shown at The New York Affordable Art Fair by Bangkok’s La Lanta gallery.

Her decade in Asia was a radical change from her early years rooted in the South of France.

Shuttling between countries and cultures, LAC gives herself the freedom to select materials from changing contexts, the result being a very distinctive style built on mixed media, layering techniques and a bold use of colour inherited from her Mediterranean childhood.

Since 2015, LAC has developed a consistent body of work inspired by her immediate environment, London, which is the embodiment of all the cities in permanent flux she lived in, visited or imagined. Her urban landscapes are created out of many memories rather than an exact depiction, expressing a very personal experience of the 21st century urban world.

Her process can be defined by a permanent equilibrium between control and chaos. Control through the applications of various techniques and the use of mixed media such as sand, acrylic, pigments, inks, Posca pens, pastels, found objects, and collages. Chaos as the layering, mixing, superposing, leads to unexpected and dynamic combinations. Applying, washing, layering colors is a process which echoes what she feels is the essence of her experience as a human being: never being able to completely grasp a place or a person, questioning rather than building certitudes, the reality of the world she tries to understand always shifting.

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Credentials

Solo exhibitions

2020

The Little Art Show/ Fitzrovia Gallery, London. Self curated show in collaboration with Brian Reinker.

2019

Urbanité, BGallery, Paris, France.

Liminal Spaces, Brompton Chapel, London. 

2018

Urban Series, L’Insensé Fabre Museum, Montpellier, France

 

Education

2003

Training program for volunteer guide at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

1991

MA in Political Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK,

1989

– Sciences Po (Institut of Political Sciences) Paris

Group exhibitions

2021

Undertow, OpenArtExchange, Schiedam, The Netherlands

2020

Art Now! / Pretty Vacant space, London. Head curator of a 20-artist group show.

Inner World, Boomer Gallery, London.

Inner Landscape, Q Collective, virtual curated show, Berlin-Tel Aviv. 

2019

British Paintings II, Bermondsey Project Space, London

2018

Where WE Live, Brompton Gallery, London.

Threads, Dundas Street Gallery, Edinburgh.

Impact of Buildings, Allies and Morrison architects and Hampstead School of Art, London.

2017

APDA, photo exhibition, Kyoto, Japan

Focus LDN Winter Exhibition, Menier Gallery, London

Threads, Dundas Street Gallery, Edinburgh

Contemporaries, Old Brompton Street Gallery, London

2016

Focus LDN Winter Exhibition, Menier Gallery, London.

Londoner’s Compass, Strand Gallery, London.

The Art of Regeneration, Menier Gallery, London.

JARFO Art Gallery, Kyoto, Japan.

Awards

  • Finalist, The Chelsea Art Society annual exhibition, 2018 & 2019.
  • Finalist, Art Room Roma 2019.
  • Part of the 24 artists out of 5000 selected for the Liberty Book 2019
  • EWAAC finalists exhibition, La Galleria, London 2018-2019
  • APDA, finalists photography group exhibition, Kyoto, Japan, 2017
  • EWAAC Artist residency in Kyoto, Japan 2016

Collections

  • JARFO gallery collection, Kyoto
  • ART REPUBLIc gallery collection, Bangkok

Other professional activities

  • Workshops for adults and children
  • Volunteer at the Hammersmith and Fulham food bank, London