Laura Williams (b.1965, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) majored in Sociology and has a career as a union organiser, a background that unsurprisingly sees her somewhat preoccupied with the particulars of human interaction. A self-taught painter, Williams has received several awards and residencies both in Aotearoa and overseas since firmly establishing her practice.
There is a joyful irreverence and sharp humour to these dense and highly detailed paintings, which are peppered with references to religion, art history, literature, pornography, design, and social theory. Often locating figures within bucolic landscapes occupied by various flora and fauna, or within intensely charged domestic interiors bursting with colour, patterned textiles and wallpapers, they appear surrounded by the detritus of daily life, frequently in various stages of undress.
Withering Gaze continues Williams' characteristically pastiche style, with these sumptuous paintings presenting an accumulation of scenes drawn from art works, films, and books – some of which have been imprinted on the artist’s memory since childhood. The canvasses are bursting with references as vast and wide as Saint Rita of Cascia (1381 – 1457), the patron saint of impossible causes and difficult marriages among other things; Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror 'Dracula'; the Greek and Roman god Apollo; 1950s American dark comedy film noir 'Sunset Boulevard'; Italian Renaissance painter Francesco Bacchiacca's (1494 – 1557) 'Ghismonda with the Heart of Guiscardo'; Daphne du Maurier's 1938 gothic novel 'Rebecca'; American painter Christina Ramberg (1946 – 1995); as well as the odd malevolent turkey and sullen toad.
