Louise Mackenzie

Louise Mackenzie is a UK based artist creating installation, sculpture, performance, sound and film works.  With a focus on living material, she is interested in the relationships between medium, sound, image and text, attempting to find ways in which these can be connected to produce unexpected results. Drawn towards the mechanisms upon which consumer-led society is founded, elements of her work focus on processes of production and, increasingly, biotechnology. Recent research investigates the use of life as material, specifically, the translation of cultural material to DNA, the insertion of this material into living organisms and the emotional weight of working with life in the laboratory. 

Projects, exhibitions and residencies include Pithos (one possible story of our lively material), Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2019; Evolution of the Subject, Gallery North Project Space, Newcastle, 2018; Tentacular Resonances, Generator Projects, Dundee, 2018; Contemporary Connections, Edinburgh International Science Festival, 2017; Photo España, Madrid, 2016; Gravitational Wave Space Station, Shanghai, 2016; The Late Shows, BALTIC39, 2016; Lumiere Durham, 2015; Domestic II, Word of Warning, Manchester, 2015 and Microbes as Material, Abandon Normal Devices, Lancaster 2015.  

?Louise received the New Graduate Award at Synthesis, Manchester Science Festival, 2013 and received an honorary mention for the Bio Art & Design Awards, 2015 in The Netherlands.  She is currently recipient of post-graduate research funding from BxNU Institute of Contemporary Art, a Northumbria University and BALTIC partnership, to explore the agency of the organism within fine art practice in collaboration with Professor Volker Straub of the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Newcastle University. Louise is a member of Northumbria University's fine art research group: The Cultural Negotiation of Science.