Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson is a highly acclaimed performance artist who also became an unlikely pop star in the 1980s. She was a pioneer of multimedia Performance and Installation art, before crossing over into the popular music industry with songs from her large-scale performance pieces, later producing full albums for commercial release. As one of the first artists of her downtown New York context to achieve a level of commercial fame, she was at the forefront of debates around the influence of mass media on the art world. She has since been recognized as being remarkably ahead of her time in embracing of new technologies in art and performance practice, and in her engagement with new media to share her work.

Anderson is a classically interdisciplinary artist, drawing on the forms, techniques and strategies of many different art forms and expressing herself across a huge array of different mediums. Performances, music, installations and film works are often autobiographical in nature, and encourage a sense of intimacy with the viewer through her characteristically meditative tone and calm delivery. Despite this calmness, Anderson’s work often features political content and engages with societal issues. Her work often involves mediating and changing her own voice as she tells stories and narrates her thoughts, framed by the striking images she creates through props, costumes and the innovative use of projection and lighting. Her artworks therefore often have a futuristic, almost science-fiction aesthetic.