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Lawrence Lek

LAWRENCE LEK

LAWRENCE LEK: Life Before Automation Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art 26 September–14 December 2025 London
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Press Release

This autumn, Goldsmiths CCA will host the largest UK institutional exhibition to date of London-based artist Lawrence Lek (b.1982, DE). Known internationally for single-project presentations combining film, installation, video games, and sound, this exhibition is the first to interweave multiple strands of Lek’s ongoing cinematic universe. For over a decade, Lek has developed a practice he describes as ‘worldbuilding for non-humans’, centering his narrative around Sinofuturism: a speculative framework in which the problems and promises of artificial intelligence and China’s technological influence converge. At turns dark and playful, his work is powerfully affective, featuring a recurring cast of characters who ask us what it means to exist in an age of machine consciousness and rapid social change – or what Lek calls a ‘science fiction that already exists’.

Taking its title from a monologue in NOX (2023), Life Before Automation positions the viewer in a series of parallel futures where present-day promises and anxieties around technological progress have been absorbed into the texture of everyday life. A new commission for the outdoor entrance to the CCA retraces this speculative history. Spanning three centuries of AI development, this timeline merges real and imagined events, including the rise of Farsight, the dominant tech monopoly in Lek’s world.

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“The largest UK institutional exhibition to date of London-based artist Lawrence Lek (b.1982, DE), and the first to interweave multiple strands of Lek’s ongoing cinematic universe, combining film, installation, video games, and sound.”
About the Artist

Lawrence Lek is a London-based simulation artist, filmmaker, and musician whose digital environments, video installations, and electronic soundtracks imagine speculative futures shaped by artificial intelligence, automation, and global capitalism. Bringing together architecture, gaming, cinema, and contemporary art, Lawrence Lek builds interconnected virtual worlds that treat self-driving cars, AI voice assistants, and synthetic performers as protagonists with complex inner lives.

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About the Gallery

Located on the campus of Goldsmiths, University of London, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art is London’s newest contemporary arts institution, and open to everyone. Hosting world-class exhibitions by international artists, and providing a space for established and emergent practices, the institution aims to enhance Goldsmiths’ reputation for excellence and innovation in the arts. Curatorially ambitious, the exhibition programme has been devised to encompass a wide-range of exhibition-making, including new commissions, historical presentations, survey exhibitions, and long-term research projects. These are iterated in response to the spaces that make up the institution, ranging from top lit white cubes to a converted iron-lined Victorian water tank.

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Address
St James’ New Cross
London
United Kingdom
Opening Hours
Wednesday – Sunday
12pm – 6pm
(1)
London St James’ New Cross
Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art contemporary art institution in London United Kingdom
Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art
St James’ New Cross, London, United Kingdom
+44 20 8228 5969
http://www.goldsmithscca.art

Opening hours
Wednesday – Sunday
12pm – 6pm
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