As an artist, Lucy’s work is inspired by theory in as much as lived experience, seeking to capture ontological questions around artificial and formal divides – the human/machine, subject/object, separations between the aesthetic and the legal. She sees herself as a speculative artist, which encapsulates anything emerging from her originally painted work, such as sculpture, sound, data, vibration and video. More detail of her work can be found at http://www.cyrenaur.com.
Current Projects
A Series of Repetitive Beats
Exploring using Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 as a framework and remit for a sound sculpture that highlights the illegalisation of rave culture through the use of bass and vibration.
Motherboard-Tree
Playing on the themes of the organic / inorganic intersections, bringing together the organic growth and tentacular structures of roots and trunks of trees, with that of ‘motherboards’ that form the basis of communication between the various electronic parts of computational systems.
Within this process is to uncover and exemplify the lack of distinction between organic and inorganic matter, as propounded by 1950s sociologist Gilbert Simondon who stated “the opposition drawn between culture and technics, between man and machine, is false and has no foundation” (On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (Minneapolis, Univocal Publishing, [1958] 2017). Analogies and synergies between the Wood Wide Web and cybernetic systems, miccorhizal networks and motherboards, are found within the work which that plays with ‘arbomorphism’, the coming together of tree-like forms with computational structures, playing with Simondon’s idea of ‘hylomorphism’ (relations of form, information, and potential).
Lichen-ise
A project inspired by learning of the symbiotic nature of algae and fungi which come together to create the humble lichen. As has been described by Merlin Sheldrake in his recent ‘Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures’ (2020), “lichens are go-betweens that inhabit the boundary dividing life and non-life”; a liminal species that exists as a coming together and cooperation of two partner organisms. See here for a series of illustrations puplished in Unspychology Magazine‘s Issue 7, ‘Climate Complexity Change’ (2021).
Laws of Ice (with Anders Hulkvist and Dann Hignell-Tully)
An exploratory project that examines the laws governing moments of transformation, referring to the laws of thermodynamics in contrast to the legality of the state, travelling deep to sites of glacial movement to learn what ice can tell us about legal change. Using sculpture, sound, video and vibration.
Exhibitions
Storiel Bangor (May – June 2023)
Treesense Pontio Arts Centre Bangor (April – June 2023)
Amass you Radiant Heretics beneath the Falling Sprawl Online (Dec 2020)
Umbilical Buddy CIRCA Piccadilly Circus London UK (September 2020)
Umbilical Buddy No Show University of Brighton (July 2020) an exploration of the human and machine, connection and disconnection, where electronic cables, ropes and wires are used to create an inorganic umbilical cord.
With all my Heart University of Brighton (July 2019) Installation and sculptural work that uses sound and vibration as well as live edge Perspex to denote the sentience of human repair, the porosity of the human/machine binary, inspired by Lucy’s experience of having a pacemaker.
out(Law) SEAS (Socially Engaged Art Salon) Brighton UK (Sep 2019)
SLEEP (with Distant Animals) Tate Exchange London UK (Jun 2018)
UNION (with Distant Animals) The Synergy centre Brighton UK (Jun 2016) participatory exhibition of real-world responses to the EU referendum.
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