LOUISA CHASE
Artist
Earthbody is a series of ecologically- focused biodegradable bodyprint works connecting body/place/time.
The series spans one year and both hemispheres of the globe, and selected works were exhibited simultaneously in Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK.

100 x 70 cm

Woad has been in use for thousands of years in Europe as a body paint, for painting illuminated manuscripts, for dyeing threads used in the Bayeux Tapestry and for dyeing military uniforms. My intention in using woad is that it both pays homage to and disrupts tradition.

76x56cm

79 x 58 cm

60 x 40 cm
Both Woad and poppies were significant in the history of Lincolnshire.
This series was inspired by the colour blue and Yves Klein’s ideas about spirituality, the body, and the nature of the cosmos. But it also re-claims the post-menopausal female body as agentic and profoundly grounded in relationship with the environment. Klein, in his Anthropométrie de l'Époque Bleue series, used young female bodies as paintbrushes with his signature IKB (International Klein Blue) paint. The toxic effects of the materials he used are thought to have contributed to his early death at the age of 34.

43 x 54cm

Woad in gum arabic on Two Rivers paper.
58 x 79 cm

A contemplation on body as ancestor, connected to human and more-than-human kin.
Chiltern Hills chalkstone was formed in deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite shells.

70 x 50 cm
A contemplation on body as ancestor, connected to human and more-than-human kin.
Chiltern Hills chalkstone was formed in deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite shells.

70 x 50 cm
Chiltern Hills chalkstone was formed in deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite shells.
A contemplation on human and more-than-human lineage.... the human body entangled and connected with the mineral and creaturely..... the human baby born with ovaries containing their entire lifetime's supply of eggs, formed in utero.
The chalkstone was gathered from a site near where my own ancestors lived 3 and 4 generations ago.