Glorious Oblivion
I am working on an extensive project creating works with every statue of a historic woman I can locate in major European cities. I have so far been to Rome, Paris, Athens, Brussels, Madrid, Berlin, Budapest and London. In my work I create interventions and take photos of statues and monuments, to draw out narratives, political and social contexts and hidden stories. The images are printed on a variety of materials and in sculptural installations. In this project I am particularly interested in the slim legacy even prominent people leave behind and in unearthing forgotten histories. Some of the characters repeat across different cities and countries and some, such as Jean D’Arc are depicted in very different ways depending on the associated ideology (politically left or right, religious, feminist or patriotic).
I focus in this series on the materiality of the objects and the interaction between material and narrative. These are connection points between otherwise highly diverse subjects and create conversations across centuries and locations. The figure in sculpture is always central in my work. Many of my interventions are created using life cast figures. The sculptural figure runs through human creative production as well as through expressions of power and religion and holds many at times contradictory symbolic values. Statues frequently border on kitsch, sometimes apparently designed to ridicule or mortify the usually departed subject. They exist in a parallel realm to the architectural and materialist cool of modernist architecture and contemporary artistic discourse. And yet they have a place in the clutter of our cities and occupy some of our most prime real estate.
Liane Lang is a London-based artist who studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and completed a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College followed by a Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal Academy Schools, London. She has exhibited widely both in the UK and internationally, including the Musée de Beaux Arts Calais, PS1 New York and Kunstverein Heidelberg. She won the Photofusion Award, the Tooth Travel Award at Goldsmiths College and the Cheneviere Prize at the Royal Academy Schools. She was recently shortlisted for the Cointreau Creative Crew and the Young Masters Art Prize. 2018 has has seen a solo show in London at James Freeman Gallery and her work was included in From Life at the Royal Academy of Arts. She will be presenting works at Lian Zhou Foto Festival in 2018 as one of two international artist solo shows. Her work is held in numerous prestigious collections, such as Arts Council England, Royal Academy of Arts, the Saatchi Collection, Deutsche Bank, Kunstverein Bregenz, Ernst and Young and the Collection of the Kunstamt Spandau, Berlin.