Laura Noble

Crushing Trauma 2020

Crushing Trauma

Following a collaboration with photographer Allie Crewe to produce paintings which would be used as backdrops for her portrait project I Am… photographing survivors of domestic abuse, Laura Noble was compelled to continue her exploration of the subject. Her painting Home was created through a process she devised to not only subvert but crush past trauma, both literally and psychologically, and to transform it into something beautiful.

With Home she began by listing the objects she connected and associated with domestic abuse. For The Purple Room objects connected to a specific traumatic event were itemised. Drawings were then made of the items, sourcing specific period pieces as well as representations of each object or thing. These were then painted onto fabric or soft paper in the key colour connected with each and then crushed in her hand. The act of crushing the depictions not only obliterated the images associated with the trauma, but also distorted them and the power they held. In doing so she acknowledges the fractured nature of surviving trauma, the splintered memories of trauma and the strength it requires to survive it. Painting the disempowered objects now crushed, she celebrates the beauty of those survivors and acknowledges the resolve it takes to move forward.