Li Yuan-chia: Unique Photographs

In his lifetime, Li Yuan-chia (1929-1994) travelled from China, to Taiwan, Bologna and London but found his home in a house that he bought in 1972 from Winifred Nicholson in Banks at the far north of Cumbria on Hadrian’s Wall. Now regarded as China’s first conceptual artist, Li Yuan-chia made this house into the LYC Museum and Art Gallery - a place for showing innovative art alongside children’s workshops and his own experimental work. Li Yuan-chia’s art encompasses sculpture, painting and poetry but the focus of this exhibition is photography. A group of Li’s lyrical hand coloured photographs of himself, his sculpture and garden at Banks is shown alongside the artist’s own collection of film cameras. Mostly set in the quiet of autumn and winter, these photographs convey a melancholy beauty from the last years of the artist’s life.

18 May 2019 – 12 January 2020

Image: Li Yuan-chia, Untitled, c1993. Courtesy the Li Yuan-chia Foundation.