Opening 7th of November 18:00 - 21:00
Open 8th - 24th of November
Thursday - Sunday 14:00 - 18:00
Unpacking: Artists’ Books and Other Objects
Exhibition Dates & Opening Hours:
15th of May - 1st of June
Thursday - Sunday, 14:00 - 18:00
The Transformation Gallery is pleased to present Unpacking: Artists’ Books and Other Objects, an exhibition that brings together works by Lisa Chang Lee, Markus Vater, and Wiebke Leister to explore the connections between books, memory, and the image. Using Unpacking My Library by Walter Benjamin as a starting point, the show reflects on the artist’s book not simply as a vehicle for text or image, but as a site of intimacy, resistance, and performative space.
Private View:
Join us for the opening on Thursday 15th ay from 18:00 to 21:00 at The Transformation Gallery
Exhibition Dates & Opening Hours:
Exhibition runs from the 16th May – 1st June 2025
Open Thursday–Sunday, 14:00–18:00
Benjamin writes of the collector who touches and handles books with reverence—not for their content alone, but for their aura: their history, their acquisition, their placement in time. This exhibition unfolds from a similar sensibility. The artists’ books on display are not documents of practice, but works in their own right—tactile, layered, often playful, always aware of the ambiguity between word and image, gesture and meaning.​
On the walls, artworks by the same artists offer echoes and counterpoints: photographs and text-based works that function as visual footnotes to the books, or vice versa. Together, the works question the traditional hierarchy of art object and printed matter, proposing a more fluid exchange between the private act of reading and the public act of viewing.​
Unpacking invites viewers to consider the artist’s book not as an appendix to the artwork, but as an artwork in itself—something to be opened, unfolded, annotated, and lived with. As Benjamin put it: “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.”​
About the artists
​Lisa Chang Lee’s The Word (2019–2024) is an artist book consisting out of 777 chapters generated by artificial intelligence, drawing from sacred texts across ten major world religions. It reframes teachings from Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Baha’i, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto into a newly composed scripture. Exploring how meaning and faith are reshaped through technology, the work reflects on belief as an evolving, fragmented construct. The Word sits at the intersection of devotion and data, inviting readers to consider how sacred knowledge circulates, mutates, and persists in a digital age.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Biography:​
Lisa Chang Lee is a multimedia artist based between London and Beijing. She holds a BA in Fine Art from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (2010), and an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art, London (2014). Her interdisciplinary practice explores the entanglements of technology, ecology, and cultural narratives through moving image, sound, and print. She is currently an associate lecturer at the Royal College of Art and a visiting lecturer on the MA in art and science at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.​
Her recent solo exhibitions include The Word_, Book Launch& artist talk, Biblioteka, London, UK (2024); Absence at Ginkgo Space, Beijing (2021–22); Symphony Zero at San Mei Gallery, London (2021); and Dreamers Awake (online) at Beijing Contemporary Art Expo (2020). She has participated in major group exhibitions and institutional projects such as Thousand Silicon Eyes at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2023); Decolonial Gaze at Goethe-Institut China (2025); Art and the Book, Warburg Institute, London, UK (2025); Symphony of Senses, West Bund Art Centre, Shanghai, China (2024); Salon for a Speculative Future, Vestry Street Gallery, London (2024); Atlas of Affinities Vol. 2: Scores for Movement at Hua International, Berlin (2023); Beyond Lenses: Two Decades of Visual Dialogue, Hangzhou (2023); Us Amid Nature and After Nature at the Art Museum of the Canton Academy of Fine Arts (2023); Interdependency at the Chengdu Biennale (2021); and research-led projects at the Warburg Institute, London.
Her work reflects an ongoing inquiry into environmental humanities, biolinguistics, and multispecies communication, often engaging in collaborations across scientific and cultural disciplines.​
Markus Vater’s Objects of Significance (2024) “Objects of Significance” comprises of a series of photographs and writings compiled over several years. The book delves into objects imbued with personal meaning, exploring themes of relationships, memories and existential inquiries. With a blend of humour and profundity, Vater poses contemplative questions such as: "What do you see when you close your eyes and turn your head toward the sun?" and "How much does a cloud weigh?". He engages in imaginative dialogues, including an interview with the North Sea and reflects on the nature of art and the essence of voids.​
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Biography:
Markus Vater was born 1970 in Düsseldorf. His artistic practice is diverse and includes: Drawing, painting, animation, photography, performance and sculpture. He has taken part in numerous national and international exhibitions: Among others at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum Gertsch in Switzerland, at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, The Royal Academy in London and more recent at Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, the Wilhelm Hack Museum and the Sprengel Museum in Hannover.​He had shows with Timothy Taylor, Vilma Gold, ibid-projects, Anthony d'Offay and Centre of Attention in London, with Sies+Hoeke Gallery in Düsseldorf, Gallery Johnen in Cologne and Galerie Schoettle in Munich. He has worked on public projects for the fundament foundation in Tilburg and general public agency in London. Between 1995 and 2003 he has been part of the art collective hobbypopMuseum. His works are in the Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen, The Falkenberg Collection Hamburg, the Collection of the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, the Collection of the Wilhelm Hack Museum Ludwigshafen and the Collection of the Franz Gertsch Museum Switzerland among others. He is Alumni of the Villa Romana Scholarship Florence.
From 2001 onwards he has been teaching as a Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmith College London, Slade and Chelsea College of Art. In 2014 he was Guestprofessor for Painting and Drawing at the HfBK Hamburg. 2015 and 2016 he was Tutor in Fine Art (Performance) at the Royal College of Art in London. From 2016 to 2019 Guestprofessor for Drawing and Painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in Karlsruhe. As of now he is Professor for Painting/Drawing and interdisciplinary Studies at the HBK Essen.​Markus Vater lives and works in London, Folkstone and Düsseldorf and is represented by Rupert Pfab Gallery in Düsseldorf and Gallery Peter Zimmermann in Mannheim.
​Wiebke Leister’s Echoes & Callings (2018-2023) explores the haunting return of silenced women from Japanese Noh drama—figures once labelled mad, jealous, or broken. Transformed into vengeful spirits, they reappear as ghosts, images, and echoes, navigating states of pain, rage, and release. The book follows their shifting presence from figuration to abstraction, tracing an imaginary lineage of fury and manifestation. As contradictory apparitions, they are embodied through stillness and voice, absence and intensity as they conjure another self from their liminal existence—revealing themselves as terrifying images that have existed throughout times and cultures. But finally, speaking out, loud. The work asks: If we do not understand the figure of Hannya as a ‘jealous’ or ‘mad’ woman, but rather as someone who has a right to be angry - how does that change the way we understand her image?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Biography:
​Wiebke Leister is a German artist who teaches at the Royal College of Art in London, where she completed a PhD in 2007. Her work looks at the intersection of photography, writing and theatre by way of developing a performative understanding of how movement enters the structure of the still image, and how the liveness of viewing interacts with our interpretative processes. As an expanded critique of portraiture, her research challenges the limitations of mimetic representation and individual likeness, often focusing on the human image as a way of exploring human boundaries and how one encounters oneself in others.
​Following a live collage projection with sound improvisation at Kings Place in London in June 2018, her book ‘Echoes & Callings: A Hannya Manifesto’ was published with Ma Bibliothèque in May 2023. Building on this earlier research into the ambiguous character of snake-women in Japanese theatre, she is currently researching themes of contradictory 'Serpent-Symbolisms' in late Renaissance and early Baroque painting, which led to a performance at the National Gallery in London in June 2024. As part of this project, she is currently a Hiob Ludolf senior research fellow at Gotha Research Library, University of Erfurt.