“Magic is one of my ongoing interests”. There is a moment when a magic trick is performed where the expectations of an audience climaxes by a seemingly impossible feat by the magician. Achieved though practiced perception, the storyline, or pledge, is first built by a simple and understandable concept - a beautiful assistant is securely locked into a box with her head and feet clearly visible - and moments later she is divided into pieces, or just vanishes without a trace. However incomprehensible, the duplicity has been playacted to most people a few times. Even if the viewer missed the build-up, there is a clear recognition of how it started and how it will end: unharmed, the assistant leaves the box, always smiling.

Lane’s move to London in ’86 and the enrolment at Goldsmith College of Art could not have been at a more exciting time. The freshmen of the mid-eighties inspired, encouraged and creatively supported each other to such extend that ten years later they had become the new establishment in the art world. Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Alessandro Raho, Abigail Lane and two dozen others cleverly had turned the spotlight at themselves through a wave of provocative artworks and self-promotional events, such as the Freeze exhibition; a group-show entirely organised by the graduates of ’88. Despite the opinion of some art critics that their works were nothing more than a desperate attempt for attention, many of the artists - labelled Young British Artists or YBAs by the mid-nineties - were quickly taken seriously and offered representation and solo shows at London’s galleries, while simultaneously “touring” Europe and the United States in exhibitions nonchalantly titled ‘Brilliant!’ and ‘Sensation’.

At the Freeze exhibition, Lane’s piece consisted of three chairs hidden by white fabric, buttoned - like shirts - along the middle, resembling two tent-like structures. On the nearby wall, three white starched collars - presumably belonging to the shirts - were arranged as flying ducks, escaping like magic. ‘Flying Collars’, the title of the debut show piece, suggests no obvious explanation and asks the viewer to connect the dots of this unusual and quite bizarre installation.

The artist’s influences, such as American evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould and film director David Lynch, famous for Twin Peaks and his delightfully mind-bending movies, are clear - and through her wax sculptures, installations, videos, photography and wall-paintings, Lane explores aspects of the human psyche. Often with unsettling effects. In one installation a large red ink pad is hanging on the wall. The adjacent wallpaper is a mess of unclear palm-prints and splashed brush strokes in dark-red paint; close by - in the same room - body fragments in red-painted wax are hanging from the ceiling. A sight beyond comfort to most viewers. What happened the minutes or hours before entering the gallery is left unanswered and delve into anybody’s deepest fears. Watching a group of laughing children leaving the room, with buckets of red paint and soiled hands would make all the difference to the perception of this installation. Lane offers the viewer no such assurances. In fact, the wallpaper “décor” was copied from a real-life crime scene.

In Lane’s most interesting works, the viewer enters right in the middle of a magician’s “turn”, robbed of the information that goes before, and having to rely on the murkiest corners of the mind to fill in the gaps.

Created as an installation in 1997, You Know Who You Are belongs to Lane’s more humourous pieces within her practice. Here, the viewer arrives at a moment when a person has vanished into smoke, which is rising calmly from the brown leather shoes left intact on the soil. A spotlight from above accentuates the smoke hinting a circus performance; perhaps a trick performed in front of an audience sitting on wobbly wooden chairs around the circular arena. Or just as well, it could have been a person - at the wrong place and time - beamed up to a UFO passing over the darkest of forests. Often the truth is much closer to reality. Adding weight to the second word of the title, it is as simple as a message to an ex-boyfriend: You Know Who You Are. Indeed, the shoes belonged to the British artist Paul Fryer. Twisted, but not without funny side to it.

A step away from the world of magic, For His Own Good touches another theme of Lane’s practice: animals and their interaction with humans, or rather domestication. Bo, the name of the Staffordshire Terrier in the photograph, was in the nineties classified as a Pit-bull Terrier and suddenly by law required to wear harness and muzzle, for his own good. The photograph is heart-breaking; his head bowed in submission, the tail between his legs and a look of shame in his eyes, trying to understand why he - literally - has been tied up in law-making. Looking at Bo, it is difficult not to humanise the emotions projected in this strong black and white photo, touching our deeply programmed sense of empathy - and fear.

As part of the sixteen graduating students from Goldsmith College of Art in July 1988 showing their creations at an empty warehouse building in the East London Docklands, the legendary Freeze art exhibition inserted Abigail Lane on a short list of artists quickly becoming the new establishment. The artist’s early representation and first solo show ‘Making History’ in 1992 at the gallery of the London-based German art dealer, Karsten Schubert, fast-forwarded her career with an acclaimed solo show titled ‘Skin of the Teeth’ at Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in 1995, and notably, two shows in 1998; at Victoria Miro in London and at Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago. For three decades Lane’s works have been widely exhibited and she is today regarded as one of the founding artists of the YBAs. Lane lives and works in London.

From the installation You Know Who You Are (1997) and the photographic work For His Own Good (1995) - the latter, part of a group show at Victoria Miro - two print editions were released in a collaboration between Abigail Lane and Eyestorm in 2004. You Know Who You Are is an archival print in an edition of 30, and in a larger edition of 75, For His Own Good is presented as a lithographic print. Both print editions are signed, titled and numbered on front.

You can find more information about the two print editions and see them in further details on Abigail Lane’s artist page here.