Jo Lawrence’s films integrate stop-motion animation, puppetry, photography, and mixed media to create conceptually layered, visually rich works. During her first animation residency at Bradford’s National Media Museum, she developed Glow, commissioned by Channel 4 and screened in 2007. In 2008, she became Digital Media Artist-in-Residence at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, where she began Glover, inspired by the medieval Ebstorf Map and a pair of sixteenth-century gloves. Widely screened, the film was nominated for the finals of the British Animation Awards.

Transformation is a central theme in Lawrence’s practice, alongside recurring explorations of death, science, fashion, and the uncanny. Notable works include Pavementopera for Tate Britain’s Tate Late (commissioned Max Reinhardt 2009), Barnet Fair (2012) for the National Media Museum, and Ylem, an Animate Projects/Lupus Films commission for Channel 4’s Random Acts that won the 2012 Screengrab Media Award. In 2014, she created the sting for the Bradford Animation Festival and produced The Land of Lace, an animated digital opera for Mahogany Opera. Her residency at Four Corners Gallery led to The Woman Who Owns the Sun.

Her 2019 project Datacosm, commissioned by Collusion, was a collaboration with Cambridge Consultants. Using their AI system The Aficionado, it analysed live piano music and generated real-time animation, later presented as an installation at Collusion’s Cambridge showcase. After a residency at Lightworks in Blackpool, Lawrence completed Llygad y Lleuad (The Eye of the Moon) for Pontio Gallery, Bangor—an ambitious film installation celebrating Caradog Prichard’s Un Nos Ola Leuad—screened in Pontio’s main atrium in November 2021.

She is working currently on personal film and animation projects that experiment with ceramics, printmaking and augmented reality and has just completed a project for the Explore strand of Immersive Arts, having received funding to develop further work integrating AR.

FILMOGRAPHY

2021 Llygad y Lleuad ( The Eye of the Moon)

2019 Datacosm

2015  The woman who owns the sun

2014  The Land of Lace

2014  Sting for Bradford Animation Festival

2012  Ylem

2012  Barnet Fair

2011  Square Peg

2010  Glover

2009  Pavementopera

2007  Glow

2003  Zeuxis

2002  0800

2001  Red Thread