STONE AND BONE | LIANE LANG AND KATE BELLIS
22-25 FEB 2024 | 12-6PM | THE OLD BREWERY SPACE | FREE
STONE AND BONE
EarthBound Collaboration pieces by Liane Lang and Kate Bellis, celebrating the role of Women in Quarrying. Alongside some of Kate’s work from HILL with the working community around Longcliffe Quarry in the Derbyshire Peak District.
Liane Lang is a mixed media artist with a focus on the conversation between sculpture and photography. In her work she frequently prints images onto unusual materials and objects to explore the tension between the narrative and historical dimension of the image and the texture, scale and presence of the material world. Lang takes a particular interest in monuments, statues and historic spaces and uses a wide range of materials from bark, lead and leather to marble and bronze.
Lang studied at National College of Art and Design in Dublin, took a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, and an MFA at the Royal Academy Schools, London graduating in 2006. She lives and works in the East End of London. She has exhibited widely both in the UK and internationally, including the Royal Academy of Arts, Musée de Beaux Arts Calais, PS1 New York, Kunstwerke, Berlin and Kunstverein Heidelberg. She won the Photofusion Award, the Tooth Travel Award and the Selina Cheneviere Prize. In 2019 she completed a fellowship at Fundacion BilbaoArte in Spain. 2021 has seen a solo show in London at James Freeman Gallery and a residency with Ampersand Foundation and the Wirksworth Festival which culminated in a major installation in 2022.
In 2022 she created a video, sound and sculptural performance at the Museo Guggenheim in Bilbao as part of the Toparte program. In 2019 she exhibited a major installation at Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany as part of Come Back and at James Simon Gallery, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, as part of Nah am Leben. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, such as Royal Academy of Arts, MoMA, V&A, The Art Institute of Chicago, Arts Council England, the Saatchi Collection, Deutsche Bank, Kunstverein Bregenz, Ernst and Young and the Collection of the Kunstamt Spandau, Berlin.
Kate Bellis was born in1969 and spent her childhood on a small farm in Devon. At the age of 17 she decided to leave this isolated rural environment and study photography at Nottingham Trent University, from where she graduated in 1991 with a BA(Hons) degree.
In 1992 she was an award winner at the Observer Young Photojournalist of the Year Competition. This gave her the chance to travel across China and into Tibet. The article that came from this work was published in the Independent on Sunday magazine. For several years, before becoming a mum, Kate travelled widely with her Leica camera, from Ireland to India, Uganda to Kurdistan. These articles and commissions often dealt with people and cultures that were in some way under threat, and with the strong relationship to the land around them.
Kate settled in Derbyshire towards the end of the 1990s and began a series of photo essays with the Derbyshire hill farming community. Following this, ‘Gathering’ was commissioned by VARC (visual Arts in rural communities). A project working alongside the Northumberland Hill Farming families with acclaimed Sculptor Sally Matthews. The exhibitions that came from the Derbyshire work and ‘Gathering’ have toured widely, reaching both rural and urban audiences, nationally and abroad.
Kate has published three books, ‘On The Edge’ (2001) ‘Gathering’ (2005) and HILL (2018) Her images have been published in many national and international newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian, The Times, The Independent on Sunday and the American photo Review and Black and White Photography Magazine.
Kate lives with zoologist, Professor Karim Vahed , their Son Gabriel, and a menagerie of furred and feathered beasts. Their home is a very old stone cottage at the bottom of a steep wooded track on the side of a hill near Wirksworth in the Derbyshire Peak District.