Laura Ford ‘The Great Outdoors’

Laura Ford’s sculptures are attractive, tactile objects made from a variety of textile
materials and resemble gigantic soft toys. But as with a dream, the works are woven out of memory fragments that are just as much her raw material as the fabric offcuts, old clothes and other debris that have been sewn together to form them. Small polar explorers pull heavily-laden sledges through ‘the great indoors’ while larger-than-life stags stand guard. Her Headthinkers are small boys dressed in pensioners’ attire with oversized top-heavy donkeys’ heads. The sculptures are ambiguous, generating pathos and apprehension simultaneously as they explore themes of identity, the outsider and the uncanny through the complex worlds of childhood and domesticity.