Are we living in the end times? Will consumer capital choke our planet, fuck up our reproductive organs, turn our food to poison? Is it productive to think in these parameters, or can we imagine something fantastical emerging from our infinite waste?
Lara Beasley is a multidisciplinary performance creature from Birmingham and working in Reading, who skulks around bins, eats plastic, and tries to transform into something naturecultural. Viewing plastic waste as humanity’s queer bastard child, they attempt to embody waste and survive against the will of its’ creator, in turn revealing ironies in fear and grief over the Earth’s slowly violent death.
Using the framework of queer performance, they use surreal, science-fictional storytelling and camp humour as a means of making accessible their post-human, post-natural world, reframing normative views of the eco-apocalypse. Their use of scrap material intentionally undermines systems of capital and productivity, and attempts to unfurl something intriguing about the stuff that our species leaves behind to never decay.
CV
2025
Live x Platform Graduate Award, Modern Art Oxford
Double Okay Mentorship Programme | Reading
Performance Art Evening, Rising Sun Arts Centre | Reading
2024
ENTROPY, Open Collective x Hypha Studios | Reading
Lewd, Crude, and Tragic, South Street Arts Centre | Reading
Dancers from the Deep, Ocean Rebellion | London
Double Okay Takeover, Vagina Museum | London
2023
Empires, Empires, South Street Arts Centre | Reading
2Queens2Screens2, 2 Queens | Leicester
Reading Pride Xtra Stage
2022
Monsters of the World Tour, Jon McCurley via Eastside Projects | Birmingham
Midnight Gathering, Open Collective | Reading