Statement / Bio
2019 RU alum Lauren Berkowitz is an Australian artist whose work engages with ephemeral and recycled materials. Cells III is part of a series of works realized during her residency at RU that explore the poetic and sensory resonance of materials and their transformative qualities through light, volume, and space. Berkowitz’s work is often site-specific and relates to ideas of retrieval and regeneration. She is inspired by the Jewish concept of Tikun Olam, the idea of recuperation and repair of the broken world through small gestures. Recently she works with plastic forms that become both biological and architectural, also suggesting the interior of the body or an imaginary forest.
Berkowitz was most recently commissioned to realize Ecosphere, at Pavillion, Monash University, Melbourne. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Kronenberg Wright Gallery, Sydney, Artspace, Sydney, La Trobe Museum of Art, Melbourne, Jewish Museum of Australia, Heide Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Victoria, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Achi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan. Her work is in the permanent collections of many Australia museums as well as Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami, National Library of the Netherlands (Koopman Collection), The Hague, Albright-Knox Art Gallery Library, Buffalo, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Boston, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Artist website: www.laurenberkowitz.com.au/