Descent and Return; 2026; photograph documenting cloth boiled in alder cone tannin being soaked in iron-rich groundwater at Cotton Dell.
About
Laurel Gallagher is a visual artist and process-based researcher working across painting, textiles, photography, video and performance. Her method is cyclical and embodied. Each work begins with action in a particular place, takes shape through reflection and story, and once shared becomes a mythology built from lived experience that others can recognise and join.
Her practice moves between an upper world and an underworld, both real places as well as states of mind. The upper world is outward and shared: wild land, birds, families and community. The underworld is inward: cold water, the body, fabric, and the care carried by women. Each brings its own knowledge and transformation. Her current research explores women, motherhood, ecology and care, using textile processes to create mythological spaces where experience can be recognised out of time.
