Laura Sillars

Professional research interests circle around issues of art and its relationship to the civic realm. I have spent 20 years working in curatorial roles in art galleries in the UK and abroad including Tate, FACT, MOCAD (Detroit) the New Museum (New York) and Site Gallery. I have worked on major city wide festivals including Liverpool Biennial ('04,'06 and'08), Abandon Normal Devices ('08 and '10) and Art Sheffield ('11 and '15). As a Director, my interests focus around the role of arts institutions within civic and public life. 

 

My academic research focuses on strategies and tactics employed by visual artists whose work critiques aspects of contemporary civic society. I focus on a small number of case studies on artists who directly investigate the social, geo-physical and economic infrastructure of technology. The material I am exploring has clear art historical precedents; it draws from mystical, spiritual and Romantic traditions as well as from material developed within the field of techno-science and popular culture.

 

 

Professional Background:

Artistic Director (Co-Director), Site Gallery, Sheffield, 2011-18

Producer, Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead Films, Artangel & MOCAD, Detroit, 2010

Programmes Director, FACT, 2007-10

Senior Curator: Collaboration Programme, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool, 2006-7

Curator: Public Programmes, Tate Liverpool, 2003-6

 

Middlesbrough Town Hall, Board, 2018

Middlesbrough Cultural Partnership - 2018

Chair, Workplace Foundation, Gateshead, 2015-2019

Engage Board Member, National, 2016- 2019

AHRC Advisory Board Member, National, 2015-19

Futureverything Board Member, 2015- 2019

Steering Group Member for the Tour de France Cultural Festival 2013-4

Founding Chair of the Sheffield Cultural Consortium, 2012-14

Arts Council Turning Point Board Member, 2011-13

Liverpool Art and Regeneration Consortium, CEO leadership member, 2007-10

Liverpool Art and Design Academy, Liverpool John Moore’s University Advisory Board Member, 20016-10

Culture Campus Board and Advisory Representative for FACT, 2004-7

Critical Forum Chair – Tate Liverpool and University of Liverpool partnership, 2003-6

 

Liquid Crystal Display - Site Gallery (Sept-Dec, 2018); MIMA (Feb-June, 2019)

City of Ideas (Commissioning 6 public art works, Sheffield/Busan, South Korea), 2018/19

Material Truths - Site Gallery (Feb-March, 2018)

 

Essay, Liquid Crystal Display, in A.Sule, K.Young, S.Jackson (eds) Liquid Crystal Display, (Site Gallery: Sheffield), 2018

Laura Sillars (ed.), Ernest Edmonds: Light Logic (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2012)

Essay in Katja Riemer (ed.). Lynn Hershman Leeson - Seducing Time (Bremen: Kunsthalle Bremen, 2012)

Essay in Suparak, Astria (ed.), Keep it Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with the Yes

Men (Pittsburg: Carnegie Mellon University, 2009)

Essay in Cipullo. Angelica, Karen Newman, and Lewis Biggs (eds.), We Are The

Real-Time Experiment (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009)

Essay in Miah, Andy (ed.), Human Futures(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,

2008)

Essay in Harris, Jonathan. Identity Theft (ed.) (Liverpool: Liverpool University

Press, 2008)

Extended Essay Notes in Daniel Birnbaum, ‘A Changed Experience of Space:

Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hörbelt’, Jonathan Harris (ed), Art, Money, Parties: New Institutions in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004)

Essays on Carl Michael von Hausswolf, Navin Rawanchaikul, Werner Kaligofsky,

Dorit Margreiter, Oswaldo Macia and Lara Almargegui International Exhibition

(Liverpool: Liverpool Biennial, 2004)