THE BOOTH
The Booth began as an exploration of artistic identity and the different creative voices that had emerged throughout my practice.
Presented as an art-fair stand, the installation brought together five artist identities - Lara Bowen, Will Howell, Ceridwen Colourful language and Elle.Be.ing - each with their own work, language and way of seeing.
The Booth, 2025: mixed media installation
MA Fine Art Summer Show, University of Brighton, Grand Parade.
For years I had made work under different names, allowing myself to explore ideas that somehow didn't feel as though they belonged to 'Lara Bowen'. Will Howell made geometric abstract paintings informed by colour and sound; Ceridwen worked with vessels, memory and language; Elle.Be.ing explored identity through layered self-portraiture. The installation also included drawings made by my grandmother, Irene Catt, as a young woman in 1929–30.
Rather than presenting these voices separately, The Booth brought them together for the first time within the familiar structure of an art-fair stand - complete with rescued fair carpet, tools, lanyards and the paraphernalia usually hidden behind the polished presentation of an exhibition.
What began as a question about multiplicity became an important turning point in my practice. I stopped thinking of these different ways of making as separate identities and began to recognise the threads connecting them: memory, colour, material, identity and lived experience.
The Booth ultimately gave me permission to see all of it as one practice.