‘Liquid Crystal Display’ – Lise Autogena and Penny McCarthy feature in exhibition at Sheffield Site Gallery – Until 27 January 2019
Photo by Waad AlBawardi, The Hidden Life of Crystals, 2018.
16 November 2018 Update:
The exhibition featured in a piece in Frieze magazine exploring the triumphant return of Sheffield’s art scene. Read more here.
Sheffield Hallam Researchers Lise Autogena and Penny McCarthy will take part in an exhibition entitled Liquid Crystal Display at Site Gallery in Sheffield this month, opening on the first weekend of Site’s new refurbishment. The exhibition opens on Saturday 29 September and runs until Sunday 27 January 2019 and is curated by Laura Sillars with Angelica Sule.
Image by Lise Autogena
We inhabit a ‘crystal era’, in a world of images supported and circulated by crystal mineral technologies.
Historically associated with mystical healing, gazing and alchemical practices, crystals are now prevalent in technology including computers, mobile phones and state-of-the-art medical equipment. At the heart of a laser-beam is a vibrating crystal, touch-screen technologies, and the optical cables that keep us connected, are all enabled by this extraordinary material substance.
LCD takes shape around an ambitious new commission by artist Anna Barham, titled Crystal Fabric Field. Based on the fundamental geometric form of naturally growing crystals, the sculpture operates as a cabinet of curiosities, housing artworks by 16 other artists, all exploring the material possibilities of crystals. The works examine and observe liquid crystal phenomena, revealing the mystical properties of objects, linking technology and the natural world and exploring links between crystal, capital and contemporary culture.
Liquid Crystal Display
Site Gallery, Sheffield
Saturday 29 September – Sunday 27 January 2019 (Tuesday to Sunday)
Image by Penny McCarthy
Exhibiting Artists: Waad AlBawardi; Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway; Ralf Baecker; Anna Barham; Karen David; The Crystal World (Jonathan Kemp, Martin Howse, Ryan Jordan); Liliane Lijn; Ann Lislegaard; Penny McCarthy; The Otolith Group; Mungo Ponton; Eva Rothschild; Ruskin Collection; Shimabuku; Kiki Smith; Suzanne Treister; Jennifer West.
Supported by Henry Moore Foundation and LUX. Touring Partner: MIMA
Other events in collaboration with Site Gallery
In collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University Institute of Arts’ Fine Art Gravity lecture series, these two events will take place in the Project Space on the ground floor at Site Gallery.
Lecture: Esther Leslie
Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form
Thursday 04 October 2018, 4.30PM – 6PM
Join us for a lecture and conversation with Esther Leslie, chaired by artist Penny McCarthy. This lecture will draw from Esther Leslie’s book Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form which tells the history of the ‘liquid crystal’ epoch, spanning from 1820 to today, detailing the key interminglings of the liquid and crystalline located in politics, philosophy and art during this time. She is also writing for the catalogue for Liquid Crystal Display.
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. She is the author of Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (2000), Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005), and the editor and translator of On Photography by Walter Benjamin (Reaktion, 2015).
Lecture: Antony Hudek and David Morris
Exorcising the present ghosts of our immediate future.
Thursday 06 December 2018, 4.30PM – 6PM
In 1998 Site held an exhibition called star dot star which itself looked back to an exhibition at the ICA in 1968 called Cybernetic Serendipity which was heralded as one of the first exhibitions to incorporate art and technology. 2018 is a 20 and 50 year loop from these exhibitions and a moment when Site is also looking to the archive in preparation for the 40th year of the organisation in 2019.
Chaired by Jeanine Griffin, Site’s current PhD researcher, speakers include Antony Hudek on another key exhibition in relation to technology: Les Immateriaux, 1985, and David Morris of Afterall (Central St Martin’s) who runs an exhibition histories project.
Antony Hudek is a Belgium based curator and director of the Curatorial Studies postgraduate programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) of University College Ghent.
David Morris is a writer, researcher and educator. He is an editor of Afterall journal (Central Saint Martins, London) and managing editor of Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series, and teaches at University of the Arts, London.
Professor Lise Autogena is an artist and a Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Art at the Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University. Find out more about her work here.
Penny McCarthy is a Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University. Find out more about her work here.
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