Tribute | Laurens Tan

Bye Laurens x

Laurens of the restless soul, that constantly dragged him up from dinner tables with thoughts, plans, and new ideas. Laurens with the restless energy that took him around the world to restless cities, to Beijing, to Las Vegas, but always back home to the restless ocean cliff-edge landscapes of Wombarra [Wollongong, New South Wales].

Laurens chased risk, considered risk for all its potential rewards and all that you could lose from chasing it. He didn’t lose often, and it became the central thesis of his practice as he pushed out, against, and toward, both adapting and enforcing.

Laurens always wanted to make sure you were having the best time, sourcing the best ingredient, finding the best restaurant—he was always interested in what you were cooking and how you were cooking it. He was always pulling out of the cupboard the most eccentric Asian chip. He had a very specific head tilt when he asked the question, keen to know what you thought, it was a lifetime experiment. He made great spring rolls. He loved supermarkets.

Laurens would ask you what was happening in the world but had already moved on before you had a chance to answer. Laurens and Viv [Vivian Vidulich] would have people over and before the end of the night, Laurens would already be back in his studio, his office, his mind already there. I can picture him in front of every generation of Apple computer, the screen getting bigger, like a halo, in the darkness, the ocean loud outside, the next deadline only hours away in a different time zone.

Laurens was always surrounded by an ecology of people; crazy, skilled people that moved in and out of his orbit depending on what the latest project was, each committed to his latest vision. I was one of those people, somehow compelled to see what was going to happen next. As his research assistant in 1995 when he was working at Western Sydney University, he had lost his licence and I was the driver (on which he gave me a lot of feedback), manager of the database, indexer, CV formatter, and in the orbit of Laurens. He had just started his series Vegas of Death that went across 1995-2001 and I remember arriving with him to Rookwood Crematorium with no explanation, where we spent two days following many bodies on their journey from coffin to small plastic box. He really cared about the details, and these moments, big moments.

I first met Laurens when I arrived at art school. I couldn’t believe how much he was in and “of” the world. The endless pushing forward and out. Laurens led many revolutions across the many institutions that tried to slow him down, using up their international admin budgets in a single week, being banned from the telephone as he had used the whole art departments telecom budget in first semester. It was compelling to all that got to be in it, a position that provoked loyalty, with bigger ambitions than the uni bar, too big to be contained.

At the time Laurens had already been curated into legendary exhibitions, such as Perspecta at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where in 1990 he made the first of a long-term series of works Adapt Enforce. A work that started with the words, a gun, a pipe on the ground created out of chaff and shredded rubber. This work was emblematic of the modified behaviours we gravitate between to survive the institution of humanity.

People say Laurens was transdisciplinary, but it was more part of his restless need to create, to communicate, to be in the world. It was like these disciplines so easily traversed were there in the storehouse. It was like the practice of contemporary art couldn’t contain him.

When we opened Project Contemporary Art Space in Wollongong in 1995, we asked Laurens to curate the opening exhibition. The resulting Just A Momento invited everyone from across the region to make objects that celebrated the identity of the place, and the celebration that resulted brought together everyone from the mayor, to the surf lifesaving club, to the guy who owned the Mexican restaurant across the street. This was Laurens, ensuring that we celebrated the beauty and complexity of all of us, and at the same time being right there in the centre of contemporary practice, the psycho-geography of the place we called home, selling it to others, the seriousness of it, all of us caught up in it, immersed and at the same time not quite knowing what we just signed up for.

Laurens wasn’t easily impressed. He had no patience. Viv was, at moments, his one exception. It was with Viv that his patience would be endless. They would take regular drives between Wollongong and Sydney, hours of driving. Many times, our conversations would be while they were driving to the best Chinese in Sydney, to an opening, to an event. The drive as much a focused meditation, the manifestation of love, of time. I can see them now, their faces illuminated by the dashboard—both silence and an endless conversation that stretched across decades.

Laurens always fought against any type of permanence. In dying Laurens was frustrated, decisive, and funny. He left the world as his lived, a talented outlier, defeating the odds, playing at the risky end, fighting the institution, with moments of poetry, of care, of love given to those who chose to take that journey with him.

Bye Laurens x

Images courtesy of the Laurens Tan Estate and Art Atrium, Sydney
This profile was published in Artist Profile, Issue 70, 2025.