Free to Contemporary Art Society Members
Lyn Hagan is a Newcastle-based writer and artist, and was also Founding Director of LifeInSpace, which was set up to make art in space.
Her work principally tries to negotiate and transcend established ideas of theatricality and aesthetics. As such, her work typically manifests itself through either its destruction or impermanence and in spaces that would not properly be considered stages and with non-typical ‘actors’ in chaotic interactions. This conceptual direction began with a fascination with Antonin Artauds Theatre of Cruelty.
Lyn has written, produced and directed a 9-hour performance piece Letter to Daddy based upon principles of exhaustion and repetition, using four scenes from the film Whatever happened to Baby Jane?
At the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, she developed Porculpa – Zero Gravity Cat, 2008, which situates a cat and two mice as actors in the staged environment of a parabolic aeroplane. The flight took place at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia on 8 July 2008. The piece is formed through their reactions to one another and the environment over the repeated parabolas and states of weightlessness
After interest from a project scientist at ESA, she began to structure a project that may see art on Mars for the next ExoMars Rover mission in 2019. Her intention is to choreograph a dance for the robot on Mars for when the scientific mission is over using its autonomous navigation system.
The focus of her current work started as an investigation into tattoos on prisoners, which she researched and meticulously reproduced as hand stitched embroideries. This led her to the development of a collaboration with death row inmate in San Quentin State Prison which is in California. She is telling the story of his love affair with a female prison guard using their love letters to write an opera.
Join us for the chance to meet Lyn in her studio and hear about her latest work and upcoming exhibitions.
Background on the artist
Born in Gateshead, raised in Sunderland and currently based in Newcastle, Hagan studied previously at St Martins School of Art, London; Chelsea College of Art, London; and the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland. She is now an AHRC researcher/artist at Newcastle University.
Main image: Lyn Hagan, Porculpa – Zero Gravity Cat, 2008. Courtesy the artist.