The art of
Malene T. Laugesen
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Midnight Mall
The Midnight Mall is an ongoing series of narrative images, which I began shortly after the earthquake that hit Christchurch in 2011, taking a large part of the city with it. All these images began to appear in my head, as if the quake had caused the door to a hidden room to open. We all have a place (or several) that we escape to, whether it be books, music, films or images. The Midnight Mall lies on the threshold, where memory, dreams and imagination meet. It’s the place where my love of fantasy and sci-fi and my fascination with set and costume design in movies and on stage come together with the fairytales, myths and lore of my country of birth, to form new
dream scapes where scale, characters and objects can be fluid.
Like dreams, they hint of stories without ever solidifying into a clear, linear structure. I hope this leaves them open for others to visit, to enter into with their own stories and dreams.
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Transitions
Transitions is a series of oil paintings and drawings which I began towards the end of my 4th year at Ilam School of Fine Arts, and continued throughout my Masters. This ongoing body of work focuses on liminal spaces and their relation to the search for Third Space, a place at once real and
imagined.
As an adult immigrant, I have become divided between my country of birth, the place where I trace my deep roots, and my new country where I have raised my own children. The place which is their home and therefore mine. Between these two belongings I find myself suspended, always moving
towards and yet away from.
In this constant state of transition there is a deep longing for a third space, a place to simply be present without obligation or need.
For me light forms a pathway to this space. Light is fundamental to our perception of the material world we inhabit and yet it is intangible. Like the Third Space, it is real but cannot be touched or held fast, only experienced in the moment it becomes.
In the emptiness of liminal spaces, with nothing else to distract, light itself becomes a presence. Transforming the polished floor of a hospital waiting room into a still pool of water, or the concrete wall of a stairwell into a translucent membrane. In that moment, the world is both mundane and magical.