Visitors to Lift Off! will be submersed in Gustav Metzger’s world of creative experimentation and activism between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Bringing together archive, film, sculpture and installations, this ambitious exhibition focuses on Metzger’s auto-creative work – the alter ego of his better-known auto-destructive practice.

The exhibition includes Metzger’s landmark piece Liquid Crystal Environment (1965 remade 2005) on loan from Tate. This hypnotic environment is composed of projections that create constantly shifting psychedelic patterns. The exhibition will also showcase works that use air, water and heat that Metzger first made in a university laboratory in Swansea in 1969 and which have not been seen since.

The show highlights Metzger’s close connections with the city of Cambridge. Born in Nuremburg in 1926, Metzger came to Britain as a refugee in 1939. He began his education as a student at Cambridge School of Art in the 1940s and lived in East Anglia throughout much of the 1950s. Two of his most significant lecture demonstrations, in which Metzger presented his ideas around auto-creation and auto-destruction, were staged at Cambridge University in 1960 and 1965.

The exhibition includes a new film of Metzger in conversation with curator Elizabeth Fisher, reflecting on this aspect of his practice. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue. You can buy this catalogue here.

Gustav Metzger: Lift Off! is curated by Elizabeth Fisher in collaboration with Gustav Metzger and Kettle’s Yard.