STUART PEARSON WRIGHT: Monday 9 January - Wednesday 15 February

STUART PEARSON WRIGHT: Monday 16 January
- in conversation with Fiona Shaw: 6.30pm
Free admission – please call ahead to reserve a place

Stuart Pearson Wright's second solo exhibition at Riflemaker features a series of meticulously-crafted works whose technical virtuosity flirts with high mannerism and heroic realism. The scene is set somewhere between Bow, Dagenham, Ancient Greece and William Shakespeare's Denmark.

Click to open press release.

Click here for hi-res images

Read the Sunday Times Review of Stuart Pearson Wright

Read The Independent review of Stuart Pearson Wright

LILIANE LIJN

'STARDUST RUINS'

continues until 15 February

LILIANE LIJN is also at Tate Britain in the Indica exhibition and at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, in the 'UNITED ENEMIES' exhibition

View video

For the first time in history, stardust, interstellar dust, particles of comets and burned out stars, have been brought to our planet from beyond Mars. An installation by American artist, Liliane Lijn which acts as a metaphor for this groundbreaking NASA mission, presents interstellar dust as cosmic ruins.

Lijn (b. New York 1939) is recognised as an early pioneer of art and science. In 2005, she was awarded an ACE International Fellowship co-funded by NASA and the Leonardo Network to become the first artist in Residence at the Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley.

Lijn's exploration of Aerogel, her creation of heavenly fragments consisting of whole and fragmented forms made from silicon-based Aerogel, the untouchable, ephemeral substance developed by NASA to be the collector of interstellar dust, will be exhibited in 'Stardust Ruins', a glowing large-scale installation at Riflemaker.

The exhibition follows on from the artist's 2005 residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory, and is a collaborative dialogue with the revolutionary NASA funded Stardust Mission. Since her 3 month residency at SSL, Lijn has worked with the assistance of NASA scientists to transform the porous, sponge-like material using moulded conical and cylindrical forms. Also at the Space Science Lab, Lijn met and videotaped Dr Andrew Westphal at work with his assistant on the Aerogel slices only just returned from outerspace. Under their microscope, she noticed its 3D lattice structure and the conical impact craters of the stardust particles, which were reminiscent of many of the kinetic cone works for which she became famous in the 1960s.

Lijn takes inspiration from science, oriental and western philosophies and archetypal images of mythology. She says: 'I often make use of new technologies to create works that represent the world as energy. A constant dialogue between opposites, my sculptures use light and motion to transform themselves from solid to void, opaque to transparent, formal to organic.'

Stardust combines Lijn's use of a new futuristic material developed for space exploration with the artist's vision of stardust as crumbling ancient cosmic ruins. Concurrently Lijn's films and documentary performance and interview footage, spanning her career from the late 50s to the present day, will be shown at Riflemaker on Beak Street including interviews with Dr Stephen Jones from the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (Pasadena) and Dr Andrew Westphal from the Space Sciences Laboratory (California).

Liliane Lijn studied archaeology at the Sorbonne and art history at the École du Louvre, Paris (1958). She became an artist in residence in a plastics factory, experimenting with fire and acids and working with light, poetry, movement and liquids between 1961 and 1963, rapidly establishing herself as a leading kinetic artist through many international exhibitions.

For further information on the Stardust mission visit

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Liliane Lijn's ongoing Stardust project, combines the artist's use of Aerogel, a futuristic material developed by NASA for space exploration with the artist's vision of stardust as crumbling ancient cosmic ruins.

View the Stardust Project video at www.riflemaker.org/Liliane Lijn - including the artist's interview with Dr Andrew Westphal from the Space Sciences Laboratory (California), the director of the Stardust project.

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Liliane Lijn (b. 1939, New York) studied archaeology at the Sorbonne and art history at the École du Louvre, Paris (1958). She became an artist in residence in a plastics factory, experimenting with fire and acids and working with light, poetry, movement and liquids between 1961 and 1963, rapidly establishing herself as a leading kinetic artist through many international exhibitions. In 1974 Lijn staged the performance The Power Game, a text-based gambling game and socio-political farce for the Festival for Chilean Liberation at the RCA, re-staged in 2010 at the ICA, London. In 1986 she exhibited the computer-controlled drama Conjunction of Opposites at Arte e Scienza at the Venice Biennale. In the nineties, Lijn turned her attention inward, using her own body often with video functioning as memory encapsulated in light.

In 2005, Liliane Lijn received an Honorary Degree from the University of Warwick and an ACE International Artist Fellowship leading to her residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with NASA and the Leonardo Network. Further outcomes of Lijn’s NASA residency were Stardust Ruins; installations and video projections at Riflemaker, London in 2008 and Inner Space Outer Space, a digital film made with Richard Wilding using interviews with scientists both at SSL and NASA, and previewed at the AV festival in Newcastle upon Tyne, March 2010.

Selected public collections:

Museum of Modern Art, New York
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
The British Museum
Museum of Modern Art
Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds
Kunstmuseum, Bern
Tate, London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

LILIANE LIJN
is also featured at Tate Britain from 24 October in the exhibition GO, NVC, Signals and Indica

www.tate.org.uk

and at the Henry Moore Institute in
United Enemies, 1 December 11 March 2012
Private View: November 30

www.henry-moore.org