Ancient marks meet modern circuits; living “skins” meet moving bodies. Lauren Egan and Ivan Mack present works that explore the meeting of where technology and ecology touch.
Trace / Substrate
Ivan Mack’s latest work draws connections between Neolithic rock art found on the Yorkshire Moors and modern printed circuit boards. Exploring the symbolic, technological, and cultural tension between ancient human expression and contemporary systems. By etching “gonzo” circuit boards with Neolithic motifs onto copper and fibreboard, Mack positions these objects between function, ritual, and interrogation. The work raises critical questions around cultural appropriation, especially when symbols are lifted from historical or unknown contexts. Can the act of artistic re-use itself be colonial? What duties do we have to lost or fragmented cultures? Blending technology, archaeology, and artistic speculation, the project invites viewers to consider how knowledge is inherited, reinterpreted, and erased, especially in a digital age. For Neurodivergent audiences in particular, the work offers a layered and embodied method of understanding, grounded in repetition, compulsion, and systems-thinking that mirrors Ivan’s own lived experience.
Shared Skin
A living, bio-art installation by artist Lauren Egan that explores the porous, shifting boundaries between bodies, ecosystems, and technology. Working with kombucha SCOBYs (symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast), Egan suspends sheets of living material to create sculptural forms that blur the line between skin and canvas. Alongside the physical installation, a projection-mapped video performance features a dancer embodying themes of touch, transformation, and ecological intimacy. Through this multi-sensory approach, the work evokes questions around bodily permeability, microbial kinship, and the ongoing legacies of colonisation on land and self. Egan’s work sits at the intersection of expanded painting, bio-art, and ecofeminist theory, confronting how extractive systems have disrupted our relationships with the natural world. Crafted from vegan, sustainable materials, Shared Skin is an invitation to witness fragility, growth, and decay, while imagining new ways of being in connection with more-than-human worlds.
About the Artists
Ivan Mack is a Bradford-based artist working across analogue and digital technologies to create sculptural and mixed-reality installations. With a background spanning archaeology, sound design, film, and systems analysis, Ivan’s practice merges technical knowledge with deep cultural inquiry. His work speaks from a Neurodivergent perspective — shaped by pattern-making, systems-thinking, and lived experience. Ivan’s projects explore themes including climate grief, post-civilisation futures, and the ethics of interpretation, often placing technology into precarious or unexpected environments. Alongside his artistic practice, Ivan has worked as a technologist with a range of organisations and co-directed multiple award-winning films under the collective Chocolate Bear. His process is slow, iterative, and rooted in place, with a growing focus on accessibility as a political and creative act. He has received recent support from Arts Council England, Bradford Producing Hub and a-n. Ivan also home-educates two small Neurodivergent humans, bringing care and complexity into everything he makes.
Lauren Egan is an Irish visual artist based in Bradford whose practice spans bio-art, expanded painting, and ecological performance. Working with living materials such as kombucha SCOBYs and agar agar, she creates installations that examine the body as a site of transformation, decay, and interconnectedness. Her work is deeply informed by decolonial theory, ecofeminism, and lived experience. Exploring how colonial histories have disrupted natural ecosystems and bodily autonomy. Lauren holds an MA in Visual Arts and Post-Contemporary Practice from Avans University (NL), and teaches both theory and practice modules at Bradford College across multiple undergraduate creative disciplines. She is also co-director of a Bradford-based artist-led studio, Fourth Idea CIC supporting working-class artists. For Lauren, teaching and making are intertwined, both are acts of care, resistance and inquiry. Her installations, performances, and videos often challenge the viewer to reimagine the body as porous, shared, and inextricably linked with the microbial, the ecological, and the political.
Opening Information
Mon: CLOSED
Tue: 11:00 - 15:00
Wed: CLOSED
Thu: CLOSED
Fri: 11:00 - 15:00
Sat: 11:00 - 15:00