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About my practice
Ida Lawrence is a visual artist who mixes storytelling and painting, mostly.

Photo: Rob Crosse

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My narrative paintings combine text, images and (imperfect) patterns to tell stories of (mis)understanding, (dis)connection, generosity, failure and surprise. They make a big deal out of small observations, tiny gestures and little feelings I’ve experienced or imagined in the places I’ve lived: Australia, Indonesia and, since 2019, Germany.

I enjoy playing with the ‘visual language’ of painting — how images can have multiple meanings and how the ways a painting is made including its ‘abstract’ and painterly qualities can contribute to or subvert the story being told. While each work contains its own visual logic and process, many of my paintings let their own construction process (or illusion of it) remain visible: patterns disintegrate through imperfect repetition, mistakes are crudely crossed out, a work might be painted on the floor allowing elements to be painted at all angles, and images on the one canvas might be portrayed through a variety of techniques and degrees of detail.

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In other projects she calls ‘Fabricated Histories’, Lawrence brings fictions to life through installation, mixed media, writing and collaboration. Through her education programs and workshops she invites participants to tell their own stories or respond imaginatively, playfully and critically to historical narratives.

Bio
Lawrence graduated in 2009 with a painting major from the National Art School, Sydney (former gaol). She completed Honours at Sydney College of the Arts (former mental asylum) and studied dance with the Darmasiswa Scholarship at the Institut Seni Indonesia, Yogyakarta (former rice paddy). She continues to learn (informally). Her latest solo shows were: Karsten doesn’t drink coffee (2024), Retramp Gallery, Berlin; Reality Check (2024), curated by Dwi S. Wibowo, Purga Artspace, in the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, Indonesia; and Basa-Basi / Chit-Chat (2023) in Singapore at Art SG with ISA Art Gallery. She works collaboratively too — most frequently with Woven Kolektif, a group of artists brought together by shared connections to Indonesia.

She was a 2022-2023 participant in the BPA// Berlin program for artists mentorship, a 2022-2024 recipient of the Marten Bequest Scholarship for Painting from Creative Australia, and is currently working towards new solo and collaborative projects including a publication. In Indonesia she is represented by ISA Art Gallery, Jakarta.

Themes of recent exhibitions and works include:
Conversation & communication • memory & history-telling • souvenirs • lineage • the essay • translation • Asian-Australian perspectives of home • mapping • uncomfortable feelings & emotions • play • words & language • superstition • friendship • observations in Berlin U-Bahn stations • deep fried food & other expressions of Indonesian nationalism • Australian & Indonesian political relations • salads for one …


Past group & duo exhibitions include:
• In Conversation: FX Harsono x Ida Lawrence, curated by Emily Rolfe and Bianca Winataputri at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, Sydney AU (2019)
• The 15th Asian Art Biennale, Dhaka BG (2012)
• BPA// Exhibition 2023 – Amid the Alien Corn, curated by Sofie Krogh Christensen and Sophia Yvette Scherer, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin DE (2023)
• Talking … and Other Banana Skins, curated by Michelle Houston, Urban Nation: Museum for Urban Contemporary Art, Berlin DE (2022-2024)
• Mengingat 25 Tahun Reformasi (Remembering 25 Years of Reformation), curated by Savitri Sastrawan & Dwiki Nugroho Mukti, Cemeti Institute for Art & Society, Yogyakarta ID (2023), with Woven Kolektif
• looking here looking north at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney AU (2019).

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