Lauren Baker | Remnants of Stars
Lauren Baker | Remnants Of Stars
Lauren Baker | Remnants of Stars
Lauren Baker | Remnants of Stars
Lauren Baker
Remnants Of Stars, 2019
White neon and diamond dust on a black aluminium box tray
75 x 150 x 12 cm
29 1/2 x 59 x 4 3/4 in
29 1/2 x 59 x 4 3/4 in
Edition of 6
Further images
Remnants of Stars carries one of the oldest ideas in Baker's practice: that we are all made of stardust. The phrase recurs across her work as a refrain, the scientific...
Remnants of Stars carries one of the oldest ideas in Baker's practice: that we are all made of stardust. The phrase recurs across her work as a refrain, the scientific fact that the atoms in our bodies were forged in dying stars, dressed in her language of light. Here it becomes a wide, low work in white neon and diamond dust on a black aluminium box tray: glowing glass tubing spelling its message across a field of crushed crystal, the sparkle of the dust standing in for the stars themselves, the neon for the light they left behind. The title works in both directions: we are the remnants of stars, and the stars are the remnants of something still burning. The wide format, 150 cm across and 75 cm high, suits the thought. Baker's typographic neons aim to raise the vibration of love and connection by reminding us of our place in the universe, and this piece reads horizontally like a horizon line, a phrase of light stretched across the dark. The black aluminium ground swallows the room's light so the neon and the glittering dust do all the visible work, the words seeming to float in a night sky of their own making. The image family has a life beyond the original: the title also exists as a hand-embellished print edition, now sold out, which makes the original neon the work in its fullest form, light replacing ink. White neon and diamond dust on a black aluminium box tray, H75 x W150 x D12 cm, the tray's depth letting the glow wash into its shadowed edges. Signed and numbered from an edition of 6. £12,000.