ABOUT

Lauren Housego is a multi-disciplinary visual artist working across animation and illustration. Her animation practice explores the social and power structures of capitalism through stop-motion and puppets that embody the consequences of living within this system. She explores notions of social pressure, bureaucracy, conformity, the absence of connection and, more recently, ideas of work, productivity and exhaustion. She is often inspired by absurdist literature which questions the roles we play and highlights the nonsensical in our behaviour as a society. Her animations employ characteristics typical of absurdism: characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do meaningless actions as if they are automatons, comedy mixed with tragedy and the disintegration of language which symbolizes failed communication between characters.

Her animations have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in venues such as Picturehouse Central, London and the Australian Design Center in Sydney as part of the Craft Council UK’s Real to Reel festival, Oriel Davies Gallery and Gesticulation festival in Switzerland. She currently resides in São Paulo, Brazil where she teaches on the BA Illustration at the British School of Creative Arts (EBAC).

EXHIBITIONS

'Real to Reel: The Craft Film Festival' by the Crafts Council UK 2018/19
'Inanition' exhibited at:
- Picturehouse Central, London, UK (May 2018)
- Denmark Civic Centre, Western Australia (August 2018)
- Australian Design Center, Sydney, Australia (September 2018)
- The National Festival of Making, Lancashire, UK (June 2019)
- Design Canberra Festival, The Shine Dome (Nov 2020)

Gesticulation Stop Motion Festival, Switzerland (October 2016) 'Inanition'

'Imaginary Worlds', Oriel Davies Gallery, Wales, UK (October 2016 - February 2017) 'Inanition' & 'Nobody's Puppet'

D&AD New Blood, London, UK (July 2016)

RHYTHM, Boscombe Factory Studios, Bournemouth, UK (June 2016)

TEACHING

L4 Module Leader 'Storytelling', BA Visual Communication, École Intuit Lab, São Paulo, Brazil, 2022 - present.

L4/L5 Module Leader, BA Illustration, British School of Arts, São Paulo, Brazil (EBAC), 2019 - present.
EBAC Masterclasses 2023: 'Imaginary Objects' & 'Collective Animation'

Visiting Lecturer, BA Visual Communication (online), Falmouth University, 2022.
Workshops: 'Experimental Animation for Sound and Vision' and 'Stop Motion and Rotoscope'
Talks: 'Expanded Storytelling: Visual Narratives and their Containers' and 'Creating Defuturisms: Imagination for the Future'

Associate Lecturer, Foundation Diploma Art and Design, British School of Arts, São Paulo, Brazil (EBAC), 2018-2021.