The first exhibition at a major UK institution of Liz Larner (b. 1960) – one of the most influential and significant American sculptors of her generation.
For the past three decades, Larner has explored the potential of sculpture to affect and expand our embodied encounter with the world. This exhibition brings together works primarily from the last decade and foregrounds the artist’s current ecological concerns and her continued radical experiments in material and form. Unfolding as a series of rooms, the show traces ideas of transformation: from ancient myth and cosmology to the cycles of matter. Informed by post-human and eco-feminist thought, the works reflect on how we are embodied within and intervene in the material world around us. Central to the exhibition are Larner’s ongoing series of wall-mounted ceramic slabs. Deeply interested in the transformation of material, in these works Larner embraces the metamorphosis inherent in the processes of shaping, drying, firing, and glazing. The resulting forms are textured, fissured, fractured and polychromatic – sites of experimentation which lie between painting and sculpture.