Yonder Talks

Semiconductor is the UK artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. Over twenty-five years, they have developed a critically engaged, research-led practice that explores the material nature of the physical world through the lenses of science and technology. Their multi-disciplinary works foreground the role of human perception within systems of observation, encouraging us to expand our sense of reality and question our place in the universe.

Their practice is rooted in research from within scientific institutions, including CERN; NASA; the Smithsonian Institution; Charles Darwin Research Centre, Galapagos; the UK Government Office for Science; and the Extreme Light Laboratory, University of Glasgow. These fellowships and residencies enable Semiconductor to investigate the tools, languages, and epistemologies through which science seeks to describe the universe, drawing attention to the ways in which instruments and methodologies shape not only what we know, but how we come to know it. Their artworks are exhibited worldwide, with solo presentations including Art Basel, the 4th Audemars Piguet Commission; the National Center of Contemporary Arts, Santiago; City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK; House of Electronic Arts, Basel; and FACT, Liverpool, UK. Notable group exhibitions include the 21st Biennale of Sydney; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Royal Academy of Arts, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; and ArtScience Museum, Singapore. Commissions include permanent works for DeepMind (UK) and the Novartis Pavillion (Switzerland). Their work is held in prominent international collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), as well as private collections.

Ligia Bouton was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and spent her childhood in London, England. She received her education at Vassar College and at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, New Jersey USA. Recent projects have been shown at the Copenhagen Contemporary as a part of "Yet, It Moves!", the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C., Guildhall Art Gallery in London, Minneapolis Institute of Art, SITE Santa Fe, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Bellevue Arts Museum, the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

Her work is based in sculpture and photography. She also uses video, drawing, and a wide range of installation techniques to examine narratives from science and history in order to explore the human experience of time itself. Her current work is dominated by questions such as: How can our immediate environments and daily experiences instruct us in how to understand events happening long ago or at immense distances out in the Universe? She seeks out research experiences that place her in a position of daily uncertainty, where she is struck by the modes of communication we use to disseminate information and how these modes are often coded so that only a small group of people can understand the layers of data. She incorporates this data into photographs, videos, and sculptures to use this disconnect in understanding, between those who understand the code and those who don’t, as a vehicle to explore broader narratives about our human experience.