Laine Stewart

Laine is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne.

Spanning across painting, sculpture, installation, sound and video, Laine’s work is informed by her research into material culture, memory, psychology, myth-making and folklore. Laine’s practice is concerned with human fragility and our shifting systems of meaning-making on the surface of geological and cosmological ‘deep time’. This current body of work considers these ideas through the lens of Laine’s Estonian heritage and the traditional craft and pagan practices therein.

Laine’s methodology involves an instinctive process of call-and-response between materials, imagery, theory and technique. Physical encounters with materials and textures entice image-forms that emerge as if from a place of ‘deep feeling’. These relationships are then interrogated through research and through the action of making and re-making. Particular attention is paid to processes of repetitive application or mark-making as both a generative and soothing action. Many symbols return and are reformed, much like the processes of memory and myth-making.

Laine has studied fine arts, anthropology, art history and languages in Canberra, Melbourne, Paris and Odisha.

In 2019, Laine co-founded GalleryGalleryInc.