Mario Lautier-Vella

Making art allows me to explore a long-held fascination with the curious and uncanny in our everyday lives – when the familiar becomes unfamiliar, when we look and are looked at, speculation, suggestion and second guessing – and how all of this is experienced, recorded and recalled.

My work takes cues from experiences of presence and absence, invasion and evasion, surveillance, identity, intimacy, desire and the space between our public and private lives.

I am also inspired by the function of memory, from my earliest recollections of seeing static and moving images through to the recalling and replaying of past events and encounters. Snatched glimpses, fleeting moments, murmurs, fantasy and a sensation of constant flux all leave their mark.

Recent work centres on how we experience imagery via contemporary technology: how we engage with an endless flow of on-screen images (whether we’re scrolling, swiping, streaming or sharing), the presentation, permanence and impermanence of on-screen imagery, and how we can control and alter the flow by replaying and reworking our own and others’ actions and appearances.

Figurative work presents characters, personas and alter-egos in transient encounters, sticky situations and playful reverie that prompt further narratives and interpretations to emerge. Abstract work takes further cues from the human body and its environment, as line and colour mark, stain, clash and confront their space.

An award-winning, cross-disciplinary artist, my practice incorporates drawing, painting, collage, photography, video, sound, sculpture, installation, book arts and performance, with work being exhibited across the UK and around the world. To date, my work is held in public and private collections in the UK, Malta, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada and Australia.

I am also a qualified art tutor and have been teaching since 2011. I am the founder and managing director of The Fine Art Room – a UK-based art school offering weekly courses online, across London and abroad. I enjoy teaching art classes to students of all ages and encouraging them to discover, explore and develop their own ideas and practice.