Laura Byrne is a Kildare-born artist and completed her BA (Hons) degree at Edinburgh College of Art in 2010. Whilst studying there she recieved two prestigious awards from the National Gallery of Scotland.

Byrne's work has become more autobiographical over the last two years, striving to view her situation as she would someone else's. The artist attempts to take a step back and see things as they really are; not skating around the facts - to be faced with them as a means of self-reflection.

Byrne's practice is centred around painting and drawing; working through ideas of memories, nostalgia, spaces and narrative with a recent flux into more sculptural/installation work.

Her degree show work was the begining of a long term project: Laura's Uncle Joe passed away two years ago. The artist was to clean out his house and decided to organise his photographs into a box, which he had collected from a young age until the 1990s. These photos have inspired Laura to write short stories and to branch out of her own discipline as a drawer/painter and merge this with sculpture. She wrote a short story about a woman who travels off in her caravan, meeting strange and wonderful people and culminating with one of these characters helping her to meet her demise.

Laura used these photographs to inform the characters and build a domestic space which has gone on to fuel 'Another Little Land'. The Royal Scottish Academy were captivated with the caravan piece and have selected it for their New Contemporaries show on 19th March 2011.

Laura has previously exhibited with the Royal Scottish Academy in their annual exhibitions of '08 and '09, both of which are open to applicants internationally. Laura has also been exhibiting internationally in Toronto at the Kensington Gallery with 'When a Stranger Calls a Friend a Friend'. Byrne exhibited in Reykjavik in the Kaffistofa gallery with the exhibiton 'Okapi', which she also curated. Laura held her first Irish solo show with the Lighthouse Cinema, in Dublin's Smithfield; the exhibition 'The 9th Square' ran as part of the GAZE film festival.

Apart from the upcoming 'New Contemporaries 2011' show with the Royal Scottish Academy, Laura will be embarking on a one month artist residency at SIM in Reykjavik Iceland where she will be researching and producing new work.