The Material Will Be Quiet Yet Alive

Laura Porter and Lydia Porter

Lydia is a videographer and bookmaker. She uses these formats to investigate the surface of the image as an active site and a means of translation. Her work is documentary in style, focusing on a tactile process or object; exploring how the interpretation made by the artist becomes imbedded in the making process.
Laura is a sculpture and installation artist interested in traditional, low-tech processes that don’t shy away from the role of the hand in the making process. Using reclaimed materials, Laura explores the role of clothing for its intimate relationship with the body, and discarded objects from construction that explore productivity within the building process.

Despite being sisters, the physical presentations of Laura and Lydia’s work are very different. In their first collaboration, Lydia embeds herself in the context of Laura’s practice, collocating the dual process of making, and the representation of making. The film, captured by Lydia’s considerate and sensitive approach, focusing on process and object, follows the systematic and candid movements of Laura’s process, with an uncertain outcome.

Picking apart the process of making into simplistic stages, the sculptural element of the work is informed by each respective part of the process. And whilst the video work documents the production of a new sculptural piece, the final outcome is the video itself - where the video exists in its own right, and the sculpture exists as a by-product, subverting the traditional methods of presenting sculpture.

Laura is currently the director and curator of Studio KIND. in North Devon. She is currently leading The Burton’s Art Box project, a trustee at The Plough Arts Centre, and has most recently worked collaboratively with Malaysian artist Lee Mok Yee on ‘Reciprocal Space’ funded by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture Grant.
Lydia has been selected to be part of Double Agents Associate Studio Programme, situated in the shared ACME studios in Stockwell until October 2022. Her work has been screened at events in London and Bristol, and was also selected for digital platform Sculptorvox.