Laura Moore’s practice has had a lengthy engagement with defining issues of our time: technological obsolescence, the consume/waste economy and of course, climate change. Over the last 15 years, she has garnered attention in Canada and across Europe for her strikingly executed, hand-carved stone sculptures of obsolete technology. Outdated digital devices (ie. computer monitors, cell phones) salvaged from the streets of Toronto are her primary source materials. As such, her practice performs a reversal of fortune: monumentalizing in stone what was once tossed to the curbside.

During the pandemic her work took a new direction; she gutted these same electronic devices for their printed circuit boards (PCBs) and turned to the act of quilt-making to render them as large-scale textile assemblages. The textile material is itself scavenged from a variety of sources, further underscoring the politics of sustainability and waste-reduction that is the core of her practice.
 
For the booth at NADA Miami, the gallery will display a series of new quilts based on the PCBs from the Original Nintendo game Skate or Die, a Blackberry 8700 (2005) previously belonging to the artist’s technophile father and the Original Gameboy game Ms. Pac-man. The booth will also feature a series of life sized, hand-carved stone replicas of the actual devices from which these PCBs were sourced.   -Juliana Zalucky

Image 1-3, installation view at Nada Miami, 2023

Image 4-8, Blackberry 8700 (front and back), second-hand clothing, recycled material and 100% cotton, 51” x 32”, 2023

Image 9-13, Gameboy Ms. Pac-Man (front and back), second-hand clothing, recycled material and 100% cotton, 26” x 28”, 2023

Image 14-15, Original Nintendo Skate or Die (front), second-hand clothing, recycled material and 100% cotton, 63” x 30.5”, 2021

Image 16, Original Nintendo Skate or Die, hand-carved soapstone, 0.75” x 5.25” x 4.5”, 2023

Image 17, Gameboy & Ms. Pac-Man, hand-carved soapstone, 1.5” x 6” x 3.5”/0.25” x 2.5” x 2.25”, 2023

Image 18, Original Nintendo Controller #3, hand-carved soapstone, 0.75” x 5” x 2”, 2023

Image 19, My Dad’s Old Blackberry, hand-carved soapstone, 1” x 4.25” x 3.75”, 2023