Can breath be art? Liz Larner on sculpting with hair, lashes, leather
The Californian once cultivated petri dishes breathed on by artists that turned ‘murky and scary’. But now, in our dystopian age of space technocrats, she’s taking inspiration from Nasa shots of asteroids
TL;DR
- Liz Larner's past work, 'Every Artist Gave a Breath' (1988), involved growing bacteria from artists' breath on agar.
- Her current UK exhibition features sculptures made from single-use plastic, responding to the issue of plastic waste after China stopped accepting American recycling.
- Works like 'Meerschaum Drift' (2020-21) are seen as haunting analogies to plastic-polluted oceans.
- Larner's ceramic "asteroids" transpose official NASA photos into 3D forms.
- The show's eponymous work was inspired by the Burney Relief, potentially depicting Lilith, symbolizing a powerful refusal of fate.
- Larner studied at the California Institute of Arts with John Baldessari and was part of the 80s LA art scene, preferring tangible experiences over social media.
- She believes in the power of sculpture to reshape reality through viewer engagement and interaction.