Liane Lang RA

Liane Lang RA

London Crucible

Liane Lang (b. 1973, Germany) studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, received a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London, and earned an MFA from the Royal Academy Schools, London, graduating in 2006. She lives and works in the East End of London. Lang is a mixed media artist whose practice focuses on the conversation between sculpture and photography. 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 employs a wide range of materials from bark, lead, and leather to marble and bronze.

Solo and duo exhibitions include (Upcoming) London Crucible, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2026); Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland (2024); Touch Stone, Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery, Rossendale, Lancashire (2024); Touch Stone, Maltings Gallery, Wirksworth Festival, Wirksworth (2022); Glorious Oblivion, James Freeman Gallery, London (2021); Lianzhou Foto Festival (Solo Presentation), Lianzhou, China (2018); Old School, James Freeman Gallery, London (2018); Old School, Eton College Gallery, Windsor (2017); MEM Bilbao Photography Festival (Prize Winner Exhibition), Bilbao, Spain (2015); The Saints, START Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London (2015); An Idle Brain is Satan’s Shoppe, House of St Barnabas, London (2014); Monumental Misconceptions, Rosenberg Gallery, New York City (2013); Fallen, Art First Projects, London (2013); House Guests, WW Gallery, London (2011); Monumental Misconceptions, KvH Projects, London (2010); Shadows and Stowaways, Squid/Tabernacle, London (2010); Mesmeric Monument, Supernova Gallery, Riga, Latvia (2010); Artist at Apsley, Flora Fairbairn Projects, London [location to confirm] (2008); Fondling Germanicus, Kunstverein Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany (2007).

Group exhibitions include Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2026); Earthbound, Derby Museum of Making, Derby (2025); Solo Exhibition, Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, London (2025); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2025); Dark Peak, Photography Festival, Glossop (2024); The New Hero, Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, CUNY, New York City (2023); Unreal, James Freeman Gallery, London (2023); Solo Exhibition, Vanguardia Gallery, Bilbao (2023); Oliver Projects at Woolwich Print Fair, London (2023); Roots (with Wency Lam), MEM Festival, Bilbao (2023); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2023); Mañana Incierto, Outwith Festival, Dunfermline (2023); Reasons to Tremble, Management, New York City (2023); Exhibition curated by Hugh Mendes, Tremenheere Gardens, Cornwall (2023); PowerPlay, Oliver Projects, London (2023); Girl Meets Girl, Kunstlaboratorium Vestfossen, Vestfossen, Norway (2022); Mythical Political, Firestation Creative, Dunfermline, Scotland (2022); Epilogue, Willesden Gallery, London (2022); On Time, James Freeman Gallery, London (2020); Exhibition, Iași Museum of Art, Iași, Romania (2020); Heterotopia, Sarean Artspace, Bilbao (2019); Permanent Collection Display, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019); Ghost Tide, curated by Sarah Sparkes and Monica Bobińska, Thames-Side Studios, London(2018); Kukuli Velarde and Liane Lang, James Freeman Gallery, London (2018); From Life, Sackler Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018); Exhibition, Kunstverein Bregenz, Magazin 4, Bregenz, Austria (2018); Grisaille, Leila Heller Gallery, New York City (2017); You See Me Like a UFO, Marcelle Joseph Projects, Ascot (2017); Enthüllt: Berlin and its Monuments, Museum Zitadelle Spandau, Berlin (2015–17); Der Zauberberg, Iavomirovic-Hughes Gallery, London (2017); Exhibition curated by Leigh Clarke, Marion De Cannière Gallery, Antwerp (2016); Perfectionism III, Griffin Gallery, London (2016); Ikons, Candida Stevens Fine Art, Chichester, West Sussex (2016); Intruder Alert (with Nigel Grimmer), James Freeman Gallery, London (2016); Neo Realism, GiG Gallery, Munich (2016); Adolph Menzel Ausstellung, Märkisches Museum, Berlin (2016); Sigmund Freud and the Play on the Burden of Representation, Belvedere 21, Vienna (2014); Monument, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais (2014); Folkestone Triennial Fringe, Folkestone (2014); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2014); Froward (exhibition of women artists), The Drawing Schools Gallery, Eton College, Windsor, UK (2014); Salon 67, SoHo, New York City (2014); Onsite, TAP Southend, Southend-on-Sea (2014); Brighton Photo Fringe, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton (2013); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2013); The Last Days, German Historical Museum, Berlin (2013); A Change of Heart, Leicester University Botanic Gardens, Leicester (2013); Summer Show, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London (2013); Kiss Me Deadly, RAC Club, London (2013); AMPS Exhibition, Photofusion Gallery, London (2012).

Highlights and Collections

Lang was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2025. She is the recipient of the Photofusion Award, the Tooth Travel Award, and the Selina Cheneviere Prize. In 2019, she completed a fellowship at Fundación BilbaoArte in Spain. In 2022, she presented a video, sound and sculptural performance at the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao as part of the TopARTE programme. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Royal Academy of Arts (UK); Museum of Modern Art (USA); Victoria and Albert Museum (UK); The Art Institute of Chicago (USA); Arts Council England (UK); Saatchi Collection (UK); Deutsche Bank (Germany); Kunstverein Bregenz (Austria); Ernst & Young (UK); and the Collection of the Kunstamt Spandau, Berlin (Germany).

London Crucible

London, 1666. The city is ablaze, flames tearing through streets and buildings, leaving behind fields of debris. Among the detritus are thousands of broken roof tiles, swept into the River Thames to be salvaged, centuries later, from its foreshore. In London Crucible, Liane Lang’s first solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, these fragments of another time re-emerge as ghostly traces of the city – then and now – printed with the artist’s images from the river’s edge and its surroundings. Bringing together a new body of sculptural and photographic works, the exhibition unfolds across overlapping layers of time – geological, historical and human.

The show’s title bears a double meaning, referring both to the vessels that appear in the exhibition – the crucible lining in shimmering, textured bronze – as well as to the intense and often brutal processes of material and cultural transformation. A crucible, by definition, is a situation of severe trial that produces change or reveals something new. Lang is drawn to materials that have undergone such conditions: shaped into something other by pressure, heat, erosion and destruction.

Take, for instance, Apophenia, in which an image of human hands reaching from within a cave-like rock formation appears embedded in a spill of molten bronze. Lang collects the overspills from foundries, allowing their accidental forms to guide the work, suggesting a particular mood or bodily gesture. There is a tongue-in-cheek quality to this process, reflected in the title – apophenia being the human tendency to create significance by perceiving meaningful patterns where none may exist. It’s an ongoing theme throughout the exhibition, tied up with a deeper, existential desire to make sense. In Welcome to the Machine, a piece of rusted steel becomes a support structure or even absent flesh, while in Work Flow a splash of golden bronze paired with the image of two pale limbs evokes the movement of the body, a fleeting sense of lightness.

Finding connections in this way, Lang understands, is a coping mechanism, which like her photographs, is often embodied rather than rational. Her photographic inventions allow us to project ourselves into deep time – into histories that predate our existence, yet remain entangled with human presence. Another series of works uses an artificial geological substance washed up on the banks of the Thames that appears almost like a natural rock: vibrant, glassy and weather-worn. In reality, it is a composite of the remnants of industrial processes that have, over time, become part of the landscape. Caught between formation and decay, these materials unsettle distinctions between the natural and the man-made, revealing a world in which human activity is ever-present.

If Lang’s work reveals time as layered and unstable, it also reframes our position within it. The materials she uses are not passive remnants but active witnesses, bearing the marks of human intervention while continuing to transform beyond it. London Crucible leads us through the city’s past and into its future.

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Liane Lang RA: London Crucible

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London Crucible

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