A recorded in conversation between artist Laura Wilson and The Collection’s Senior Collections Officer, Dawn Heywood. This event will introduce Laura’s work and research interests around The Collection’s archaeology collection, working towards Old Salt, a new research-led project and performance, inspired by Lincoln’s history and heritage, co-commissioned by The Collection and Usher Gallery and Mansions of the Future.

Laura Wilson (b. Belfast, Northern Ireland, lives & works in London) is interested in how history is carried & evolved through everyday materials, trades & craftsmanship. She works with specialists to develop sculptural & performative works that amplify the relationship between materiality, memory & tacit knowledge.

Wilson’s interdisciplinary & research-based works have been exhibited widely including at: Nicoletti Contemporary, London; V&A, London; Bloomsbury Theatre, London (2019); The British Museum, London, UK with Block Universe; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK; The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London, UK (2018); Invisible Dust (2017); Delfina Foundation (2016 & 17) RIBA, London; & Site Gallery, Sheffield UK (2016). In 2019 she presented work as part of Food: Bigger than the Plate at the V&A & has forthcoming projects and exhibitions in 2019/ 20 with Grand Union, Birmingham, TACO, London & MIMA, Middlesbrough.

In Conversation with Laura Wilson and Dawn Heywood forms part of The Collection’s Digital Archaeology Festival, supported by Council of British Archaeology, and Mansions of the Future’s Lincoln Live season (March – September 2020). Departing from Lincoln’s rich entertainment and theatre history, Lincoln Live features new commissions which exist at the intersections of disciplinary boundaries. The season is a celebration of performative ventures that stand resolutely marginal to both the history of English theatre and the often exclusive, disciplinary rhetoric of contemporary performance art.