Connextions 2025: Untitled Portal 08 and Untitled Portal 10 by Laura Kay Keeling

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About

As part of the Connextions 2025 project, see Laura Kay Keeling's vinyl artworks, Untitled Portal 08 and Untitled Portal 10, on display inside the foyer of the Oakville Trafalgar Community Centre.

Laura offers the following description of her work:

Untitled Portal 08 & Untitled Portal 10 are two collage pieces from Untitled Portals, Variations. An ongoing project initially presented as part of CAFKA.25: Field Guide to the Understory, which included a series of collages, an installation piece, and a virtual space. Through a process-centered approach, the artist experimented with and merged analog and digital processes to expand on an earlier series, Untitled Portals.

These pieces incorporate natural elements that have been photographed both digitally and on 35mm film, scanned using a flatbed scanner and a 3D scanner, digitally manipulated, and then brought into physical form. Continuing a dialogue between the natural and digital world, the work explores connections to where we find ourselves, the incredible and important ecosystems that surround us, and the joys that can come from everyday moments of being in and engaging with our surroundings through reciprocal care and respect.

About the artist:

I (Laura Kay Keeling, she/her/they) am a self-taught visual artist, currently located in Hamilton, ON, with a practice that questions notions of the natural world in relation to the human world; how they exist in tandem, and where they separate from one another. My work encompasses analog photography and video, digital collage, and installation. As a process-based artist with archival investigations, my artwork questions how we form connections with the natural world and investigates how we capture and cherish memories. I explore the reciprocity of care amongst natural narratives. In considering how the artist selects and cares for materials throughout the creation of artistic works, I include elements from plants and flowers that I have grown (ie, petals dropped from a flower) or have foraged/photographed from other folks' garden clippings. I scan, photograph, press, and repeat when preparing these sourced natural elements and adding to what I lovingly refer to as my archive, which has been steadily growing since 2018.

Alongside my studio practice, I am an active arts administrator. My work has been distributed across a range of popular culture channels, including feature films, music albums and videos, commercial apparel, and in The Walrus Magazine.

Links

• Laura Kay Keeling's Website laurakaykeeling.com

Organizer

Town of Oakville

The Town of Oakville is located on Treaty 14 and 22 lands, the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. Oakville is home to many different First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. A vibrant and impressive community within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the Town of Oakville is a beautiful lakeside town with a strong heritage, preserved and celebrated by residents and visitors alike. Since the 1800s, it has become one of the most coveted areas to live and work in Ontario, with 225,000 residents calling Oakville home. The town offers all the advantages of a well-serviced urban centre with first-rate facilities and amenities while maintaining its small-town feel.