MADE IN SHOREDITCH HIGHLIGHTS ARTISTS ANTHONY LAURENCIN AND ROLAND LAWAR, COINCIDING WITH THEIR DUO EXHIBITION 'AS SEEN BY ME' AT STUDIO WEST.
"As Seen By Me is a duo show bringing together paintings and sculptures by two British artists Roland Lawar and Anthony Laurencin. The exhibition title is taken directly from Lawar’s writing and speaks to the central themes addressed in each artists’ work. The exhibition is co-curated by STUDIO WEST’s founder Caroline Boseley and Bolanle Tajudeen, founder of the Black Blossoms School of Art and Culture, an online learning platform decolonising art education.
Anthony Laurencin is a noteworthy ‘outsider artist’ who will present some of his striking new paintings. Roland Lawer has received a number of public art commissions and this exhibition will present a selection of his smaller works in a gallery context.
Sculptor Roland Lawar has been creating abstract metal sculpture in animated, intertwined forms since 1984. Inspired by his African heritage and spending childhood hours in blacksmiths and carpenters in his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, Lawar became deeply invested in the limitless potentialities of form and the capacity for material transformation. His work fuses child-like vitality with angular geometry — combining the logical and architectural with the playful and energetic. He incorporates found objects and casts from steel to bring together unique and distinctly contemporary forms reminiscent of British modernist sculptor Anthony Caro. Many works utilise reclaimed steel, breathing new life into ‘waste’ objects, through cleaning, moulding, welding, and painting."