Utopia (from the series Love Letters)

laser etched ceramic tiles, glaze, grout, MDF, steel.

2024

74.5 x 60 x 3 cm

Price: £2340.00

ALANA LAKE (b. 1981, Tamworth, Staffordshire) is a sculptor and researcher exploring the intersections of art, psychoanalysis, and queer identity. She graduated from the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 2009, and is currently part of the Yorkshire Sculpture Network (2025). Recent awards include a DYCP from Arts Council England (2024), a Research Scholarship and Project Space Award from Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (2022; 2018), a Studio Funding Award from BBK (2021), and a NEUSTART Stipendium from Deutscher Künstlerbund (2021). Love Letters is a series that laser-etches toilet graffiti onto tiles, clothing, and other objects. Developed through an expanded drawing process, Lake photographs graffiti found in toilet cubicles, capturing traces left in intimate and transient moments. The series reflects histories of cruising, drug use, and the anonymity of public toilets. These fleeting expressions of desire also
speak to Foucault’s notion of heterotopias - sites that embody alternative or imagined social relations.