Laura Conlon is an artist filmmaker from Belfast working in the medium of film, photography and installation. Conlon’s practice is an exploration of narrative abstraction and cinematic temporality in relation to the uncanny and preternatural. Her work is conceptually underpinned by ideas surrounding death, ritual, landscape and folklore. Through a poetic, lyrical visual style she creates a space where the real and the spectral co-exist with normalcy. The formal compositions and lighting sensibilities are informed by classical painting that when paired with the cinematic tableau, challenge conventional cinematic time and create a hybrid temporality where the past and present co-exist. The work blurs the boundaries between the real and the unreal, stasis and motion, presence and absence; consciously constructing a space to visualise this tension.
Conlon (b.1982, Belfast) completed her B.A. Honours Degree in Fine Art at University of Ulster and completed her Masters in Film at Queens University Belfast. Her work has been exhibited by Catalyst Arts in Belfast and Context Gallery, Derry. Conlon worked in Belfast Exposed Photographic Gallery facilitating photography workshops across Northern Ireland and is currently a teacher of art, photography and film. She was commissioned by the BBC to make the short film The Presence of Absence, which was selected by Cork International Film Festival and Still Voices Film Festival. Dear Eibhlín was her second short film funded by NI Screen and BFI Lottery Fund and was awarded winner of the Belfast Film Festival's Official Short Film Collection 2021.