Design and Art Australia Online

Lauren Berkowitz studied sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne and later received a Masters in Fine Arts (Sculpture) at the School of Visual Arts, New York.
Since 1985, she has shown in 20 solo exhibitions and 66 group exhibitions in Australia, Japan and the United States. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including Project Grants from the Visual Arts and Craft Board of the Australia Council and, most recently, an Arts Victoria International Cultural Exchange Grant, which assisted her participation in the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan (2003).
Lauren Berkowitz is an installation artist, working mostly on ephemeral and site-specific works that evoke the passage of time and our place within it. Often inspired by the landscape but troubled by its degradation, her works also references the history of contemporary art, in particular American painting and sculpture of the 1960s and 1970s.
Berkowitz’s work is made with an almost obsessive attention to detail after painstaking research and, ultimately, total dedication to the moment of making. Recently she has made use of sands, gravel and salt, as well as plant detritus, to make installations that resonate meaningfully within the landscape, while paying homage to Robert Smithson’s earthworks and Frank Stella’s stripe paintings, among others.
Her 2004 exhibitions in Sydney at Artspace (an ephemeral floor-piece) and Sherman Galleries (works designed for domestic and corporate spaces) featured sands and salt, referencing the coastal and built environment of Sydney and Australia’s desert regions. In 2005, her installation, Shadows and Light, at the Lake Macquarie City Gallery, comprised coal and indigenous wood shavings, reflecting the history of the region.
Lauren Berkowitz’s work is held in the collections of a range of institutions in Australia and the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York.

Writers:

Murray-Cree, Laura

Date written:

2006

Last updated:

2011