In the Aura of a Hole: Exploring Sites of Material Extraction

In The Aura of a Hole explores the work of A. Laurie Palmer an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work is concerned, most immediately, with resistance to privatization, and more generally, with theoretical and material explorations of matter?s active nature as it asserts itself on different scales and in different speeds. Her work takes various forms as sculpture, installation, public projects, and writing. This publication focuses specifically on a decade long project Palmer undertook as an extended exploration of mineral extraction sites in the U.S, which through her narration of a first person perspective, discusses themes of the raw scientific and mechanical aspects of the industry, but furthermore those that she found a collective survey brought up, themes of environmental justice, First Nation rights, industrial agriculture, chemical weapons, low temperature physics, the Cold War, the Iraq War, biotechnology, bio-geochronology, nanotechnology, Homeland Security, globalised trade, global warming and unemployment. Palmer has shown her work, both independently and with the four-person art collective Haha, at national and international venues since 1988, and published writing since 1986. Palmer teaches in the Sculpture Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her works are in the collections of institutions such as the City of Linz, Austria, the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the University Galleries, Illinois State University.