Biography
Ana Laura López de la Torre (b. 1969, Uruguay) is an artist and writer based in London.
Ana Laura’s practice is community-based and concerned with the idea of the “common good”, both in terms of what is already common to people – what we are compelled to share, for example a public space – and of what else we might be able to share voluntarily through generosity, collaboration and exchange, by pooling resources and producing communal knowledge. Often using the overlooked and the underrated as a starting point, her work creates visible and unexpected connections between things, people and places. The work unfolds slowly in time and space, and brings together disparate constituencies with a similar interest but conflicting agendas through participatory and collaborative processes. The vast majority of Ana Laura’s work takes place in and around her place of residency in South London (where she has lived since 1995) in line with a declared commitment to a type of critical praxis that understands locality as a political context for aligning art production with community organising.
Ana Laura’s commissions record includes projects at the ICA, the Whitechapel Gallery, Arts & Business, Gasworks, La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Independent Photography (now Stream), Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the South London Gallery. She works collaborativelly with other artists, community organisations and with people from all walks of life.
During 2008-9 Ana Laura was the holder of the Southwark Studio Residency, awarded by ACME Studios, the South London Gallery and Southwark Council, culminating with the publication of Night Time, an artist book. Wider recognition of her long-term work in South London came with the international reach of her project Do you remember Olive Morris?, a collaboration with community activist Liz Obi, Gasworks, Lambeth Archives and the Remembering Olive Collective. Ana Laura is currently working on Tulse Hill Diaries – a collection of works in and about Tulse Hill Estate, and on the initial research for a new project in Uruguay in advance of her relocation there in early 2012.
After training as a woodcarver and working in a religious sculpture workshop in Madrid during the 1990s, she accidentally transited towards fine art and in 1997 graduated with an MA in Critical Fine Art Practice from Central St Martins College of Art & Design. Ana Laura is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Chelsea College of Art &Design (University of the Arts, London), thanks to a UAL studentship award supporting her research project: Living together: The artist as a neighbour. At UAL, she is part of the Studying Latin American Art Group, and co-founder of the seminar series The Practice Exchange, which she facilitated in its first season 2010-11 together with Marsha Bradfield and Scott Schwagger. From 2008-2011 Ana Laura was an Associate Lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts, where together with artist Mark McGowan she taught an Elective in Performed and Live Practice. She is a regular contributor to events and publications in the field of community-based and political art practices.
