Lauren Royall’s practice pushes the potential of materials through painterly processes, fascinated with fragility, translucency and objects with pre-existing marks. The material itself informs the process. Lauren investigates the concept of breaking and dismantling, curious about how this potential is ever-present physically within inanimate objects and each piece is approached impulsively without knowing if it will stay intact. Materials might evolve through expanding or fragmenting, reforming or destroying.

Considering intimacy in all its forms and fleeting moments of human interaction, Lauren is guided by a deep sense of pareidolia, and plays in the intersection of abstraction and figuration, straddling the two. She likes to balance harshness with softness, curious about a tacticity that toes the line between tenderness and violence. Lauren explores underlying power frames knotted within social interaction through the treatment of and dialogue with inanimate objects. By intertwining elements that are clashing, opposing or in tension with one another, Lauren considers the oppressiveness of binary distinctions.

Lauren is originally from Birmingham, studying BA Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory at University of Leeds. She is currently President of SASHA (Students Against Sexual Harassment and Assault) society, and this activism/community engagement deeply informs her practice. Recent exhibitions include ‘Distilled’ at SERF studios (March 2025) and ‘AWOL’ at Assembly House (May 2024).

Instagram: @laurenroyall