
David Leal, Palmatória, 2023, courtesy the artist
Confessions
︎ Exhibition
︎ 29 July – 3 September 2023
︎ Lismore Castle Arts – The Mill, Lismore, Ireland
Artists: Austin Hearne, David Leal & M Lissoni
Curator: Rosa Abbott
Confessions uses a queer and liberatory lens to reexamine the legacy of Catholicism and its rich visual and haptic culture, positioning the body as a locus of both horror and desire. Confessions fuses the spiritual and the sensual, and seeks to create space for the ‘high-temperature visionary obsessions’ we are deprived of by secular capitalist society.
Taking its title from the long tradition of ‘confessional’ texts, from St Augustine’s Confessions and Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask to Madonna’s Confessions on a Dancefloor, the exhibition asks if it’s possible to find redemption through intimacy or articulate an erotics of transcendence.
︎ lismorecastlearts.ie































THE BLUE, THE PINK, THE IMMATERIAL, THE VOID
︎ Exhibition
︎ 20 May – 22 July 2022
︎ Austrian Cultural Forum, London
︎ bluepinkimmaterialvoid.art
Artists: Arang Choi | Pyo E | Aitor Gonzalez | Natalia Gurova & Nora Aaron Scherer | Kubakub | Laila Majid | Jérôme David Meinlschmidt | Tamu Nkiwane | Rebecca Parkin | JJ Ramsauer | Alfred Rottensteiner | Esther Vörösmarty | Grace Woodcock
Curators: Rosa Abbott & Krishna Balakrishnan
Using a framework of the Technological Sublime to reflect upon the experienced present, THE BLUE, THE PINK, THE IMMATERIAL, THE VOID presents the work of 14 early-career artists based in London and Vienna. Spanning performance, painting, sculpture, drawing, sound and digital media, the exhibition explores how varying forms of sublime can manifest through artworks as technological phenomena and experience.
‘Technological sublime’ has been theorised since the early 20th Century when artists began turning their attention to the industrial machinery of the Modernist age. As Fredric Jameson has pointed out, however, ‘the technology of our own moment no longer possesses the same capacity for representation’. Our contemporary technological sublime is:
not the turbine, nor even Sheeler’s grain elevators or smokestacks, not the baroque elaboration of pipes and conveyor belts, nor even the streamlined profile of the railroad train … but rather the computer, whose outer shell has no emblematic or visual power … [and] television which articulates nothing but rather implodes, carrying its flattened image surface within itself.
As we enter an increasingly dematerialised way of living, the technological sublime comes to us in the form of seemingly limitless networks, an excess of images and information, and a sense of terror as we encounter geopolitical turmoil via digital news media. In the age of Kant, the sublime was a storm out at sea that threatened to envelop us. In 2022, it manifests as ominous clusters of pixels blinking on our screens, signalling war or wildfire.
In his 1961 text ‘Truth Becomes Reality’, Yves Klein – whose inscription at the convent of Santa Rita de Cascia lends the exhibition its title – wrote that “It is not with rockets, Sputniks and missiles that modern man will achieve the conquest of space… It is by the means of the powerful yet pacific force of his sensitivity.” THE BLUE, THE PINK, THE IMMATERIAL, THE VOID reflects on the fear-inducing awe we experience in the face of limitless information and technology; the disorientating effects of urban architecture and our yearning for a return to spirituality and/or sensuality in the technological age. Many of the artworks puncture the banality that emerges as a byproduct of the technological sublime by highlighting wonder, weirdness, joy, intimacy or disgust; reminding us of the heterogeneity of the world, the richness of experience, and how art can be a microcosm of this – telling stories, offering an escape from reality, opening new possibilities and allowing us to ‘travel’ through looking, rather than moving.
THE BLUE, THE PINK, THE IMMATERIAL, THE VOID will be accompanied by a publication featuring texts by Dr Betti Marenko (Central Saint Martins / Hybrid Futures Lab) and Dr Georgina Voss (London College of Communication), and a conversation between the curators and Axel Stockberger (artist and lecturer at Akademie der Bildenden Künste) alongside documentation of the artworks. An online platform will also connect the exhibition to a broader international audience, further opening up the artistic processes of the participating artists.
︎ acflondon.org









Silver-Tongued Seas
︎ Exhibition
︎ 16–31 October 2021
︎ Jupiter Woods, London
Artists: Maïa Nunes & Pádraig Spillane
Curators: Rosa Abbott & Iarlaith Ni Fheorais (Liquid)
Liquid is delighted to announce the exhibition Silver-Tongued Seas with Maïa Nunes and Pádraig Spillane at Jupiter Woods, 16–31 October 2021. This exhibition has been awarded funding by Culture Ireland.
Silver-Tongued Seas reflects on the sea as a site where diasporas and pharmaceuticals move across human and oceanic bodies, and the process of trauma and healing that occurs from that movement. Through sculpture, image, video and sound, both artists mine their personal histories and geographies, pinpointing sites of exchange and desire, featuring new work by Maïa Nunes, co-commissioned by VISUAL Carlow.
A publication featuring an essay by Roisin Agnew accompanies the exhibition.
︎ l-i-q-u-i-d.art



Woman in the Machine
︎ Exhibition, online platform & events
︎ 4 June – 12 September 2021
︎ VISUAL Carlow
Co-creators: VISUAL Carlow & Carlow Arts Festival
Exhibition Curator: Emma-Lucy O’Brien / VISUAL Carlow
Assistant Curator: Rosa Abbott
Inspired by the creativity of female pioneers working in sound, electronics and engineering the exhibition Woman in the Machine explores aspects of our current technological moment.
︎ womaninthemachine.com

I Like to Watch
︎ Online Exhibition
︎ 26 November 2020 – 25 January 2021
Artists: Lina Bembe / Peter Berlin / Adham Faramawy / Umi Ishihara / Massimo Alì Mohammad / Annika Weertz / Youssef Youssef
Curator: Rosa Abbott
Online exhibition of short film and moving image works by artists, filmmakers and independent porn-makers using the camera to explore desire, voyeurism, pleasure, connection and intimacy in the digital age.
︎ l-i-q-u-i-d.art