Lauren Baker: Lighting Up The Universe
Richard Unwin
Editor and writer at Seisma Magazine, a publication dedicated to the intersection of science and the arts. This interview explores Lauren Baker's artistic practice, focusing on energy, spirituality, and the metaphysical aspects of her work.
Lauren Baker is an experimental artist whose practice expands across multiple disciplines and mediums to address the vastness of the universe. Conceptually grounded but also aesthetically striking, her work involves making the unseen seen, translating non-visual information into installations that grab the eye. Bridging deep interests in spirituality with scientific discovery, a key inspiration for Baker is the Nikola Tesla quote, 'If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibrations'. Many of her pieces directly reference the frequencies emitted by astronomical bodies, as well as those attributed to plants, human organs and chakras.
Originally from Middlesbrough, Baker spent her twenties working outside of the art world, before time spent travelling in South America led to her participating in a street art project in Brazil. The moment of epiphany that called her to art was triggered shortly afterwards by taking psychoactive ayahuasca in a shamanic ceremony in the Peruvian Amazon. In a way, that represented the return to a journey interrupted, as Baker had started to study A-level art before switching to sociology because of a lack of freedom on the art course. Baker now works from a large studio space in Hackney, producing prints and small wall-based pieces through to large sculptures and installations.
Wide-ranging in both the ideas she engages with and the materials she uses, Baker's visual style is often built around either emitting or reflecting light. Text-based, neon works form a major part of her practice, shining bright with forceful positivity, while mirrors and metallic surfaces, as well the multiple reflection points of scattered diamond dust — offset by blackness — also feature prominently. Many of the neon pieces connect on a personal level — the artist either speaking directly to the viewer, herself, or a significant other through phrases such as 'The thunder to my lightning' and 'Together we will burn brighter'. Yet a sense of mystery and emergence — of connecting with something beyond or much bigger than our own immediate world — pulsates throughout her work.
As alluded to in such titles as The Infinity Trapdoor, 2014, and Dark Matter (Dimensional Flux), 2018, the bigger beyond evoked by Baker is essentially the vastness and multiplicity of the universe. The Infinity Trapdoor was commissioned for the Unknown Festival, in a forest in Croatia. It's a surreal art structure that alludes to the notion of going into the unknown, inspired by the writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley, who said: 'there are things known and there are things unknown, and in between there are the doors of perception'. Dark Matter (Dimensional Flux) is inspired by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope which observes deep space and has, over its existence, revealed over 100 billion galaxies. The enveloping blanket of a star-lit night sky is a recurring visual reference point, with many works channeling that sense of beauty and awe we have when viewing the stars. Inspired by the findings of the Hubble Telescope, Baker has developed the extensive series The Immensity of the Universe. Among its diverse pieces, the Galaxy Explosion works put the beauty of the cosmos to the fore, reinterpreting the imagery produced by Hubble in Baker's signature style. The new 'Explosion' artworks explore the Big Bang and the intriguing beauty born from destruction and chaos. One particularly dramatic example is Stardust — The Deep Field (Lenticular), 2018, a six-image lenticular backed by an LED light box, described by the artist as depicting 'a galactic explosion of shooting stars and space matter'.
The all-encompassing universe, as pervasive as it is physically vast, is also evoked through the artist's 2018 Colour of Energy series. Based around the energy of the seven chakras — bodily focal points central to tantric understanding of physiological and psychic wellbeing — each work resembles a single, searing sun, with a neon ring surrounding a core of diamond dust. To create the series, Baker listened to the sound frequencies attributed to each chakra in a meditative state and visualised corresponding colours. The unseen energies portrayed by the Colour of Energy pieces point to how Baker is concerned with both the known universe and the possible; the universe as understood through scientific knowledge and the universe as understood through sacred knowledge.
