Katy Connor

Katy Connor, Konteksty 2017, Sokołowsko, fot. Polak Grzegorski
Katy Connor, Konteksty 2017, Sokołowsko, fot. Polak Grzegorski

Katy Connor

Visual artist, drawn towards the ambiguous relationship between body and machine. Her work explores how our lives are mediated by technologies in a dynamic both alienating and empowering. Her recent PhD Translating the Intimate explored the material translations of blood through processes of Atomic Force Microscopy, computational modeling and 3D print. She has undertaken artist residencies in science and engineering labs (UCL, Synthetic Biology / Exeter University, CALM) and remote places (Arctic Circle), and also presented her work at conferences and exhibitions: Transmediale Berlin, Lumen Prize New York, London and Hong Kong. Her studio is based at Spike Island, an international centre for the development of contemporary art in Bristol UK.


Installation: Blood Culture

Katy Connor’s installation responds to our current social, political, economic and biotechnological climate, and the historical architectural site of the Sanitorium, Sokolowsko, particularly as a site of medicine and bio-medical research.

Her proposal is to install a selection of works that she has been making as part of her residency into one of the small turret rooms – interior (cells) of the building. This installation plays with the idea of cell as both an architectural space (such as a cloister of a monastery, or opportunity for confinement) and also in particular the idea of culturing cells in techniques of contemporary biomedicine – (“cell culture”).

Through experimenting with the spatial dimensions of cells or scaffolds, for example, novel physical encounters with artworks can reveal new perspectives. The ways in which exploratory artistic research enables these shifts in perception is the exciting possibility that that Connor to explores here, in Sokolowsko – to feed back into the lab practice of scientific researcher and also into wider public engagement on new bio-medical technologies.

www.katyconnor.com

katyconnor.wordpress.com


July 22nd – Saturday

11:30 Installation: Blood Culture
Brehmer Sanatorium – Tower