Bonnie Lane

Bonnie Lane, If You Close Your Eyes The Cars Sound Like Waves

Artist Statement

ARTIST STATEMENT.

My practice is informed by my interest in human narrative with an emphasis on human suffering of the mundane kind. My ideas originate from my own personal experiences, however as I am speaking of the human condition I aim to transpose these stories into universal and accessible works of art to which most people can relate.

I have a morbid curiosity in human banality and I am keen to reinterpret observations of the melancholic, humorous, and repetitive human condition emanating from the banal actions and experiences of everyday life.

Often deriving from an existential or nihilistic perspective, I aim for viewers to question their own existence. By stripping the space of ‘time filling’ distractions, the audience is confronted with a mirror of the ludicrousness and boredom of our daily lives. Whether it be a washing machine cycle, a mouse running endlessly on a wheel, or a sick fish swimming upside-down in a tank, I hope for my works to create subtle paradoxes of disorienting anxiety and transcendent beauty, consisting of the things you wanted to forget about, never noticed, overlooked, and ignored.

My works explore relentlessness through continuous loops, circles and repetition, with the intention to create transfixing imagery that lures the audience into a mesmerising state. This devise relays the human condition as a cycle of exhaustion and renewal, that anything that goes up must come down and any happiness achieved will continue to fluctuate between this and misery. My works often entail both dread and comfort, appearing like dreamscapes or nightmares of both the fear and acceptance of the inexorable futility of the everyday.

Although my works may be seen as an admission of the mundane and meaningless, there is always a contradictory component of longing, searching, and hoping for something more.

BIO.

Bonnie Lane is an emerging Video Installation artist from Melbourne, Australia.

After spending 2009 living and working Berlin, Germany, Lane returned to Melbourne in 2010 to study her Honours year in Fine Art at Monash University, which she has just completed with 1st class Honours.

Bonnie completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Victorian College of the Arts in 2007 and has since shown locally, nationally and internationally in public, commercial, artist run galleries & non-traditional sites. In 2009 Bonnie held exhibitions and residencies in Australia, Norway, USA, Portugal and Germany and become one of the coordinating members of 91mq Project Space, Berlin. Bonnie has received numerous grants and awards in recent years including in 2010 The Australia Council for the Arts: Artstart Grant, The City of Melbourne: Young Artist Grant, the Toyota Community Spirit Encouragement Travel Award, and a JUMP mentorship with renowned video artist Tina Gonsalves.

Art Forms