Max Livesey: The Production of History 1978
The Leper Chapel, Cambridge.
Saturday 7th November – Saturday 14th November 2026.
Open daily 12pm-6pm.
Opening night: Saturday 7th November, 6pm-9pm.
The Production of History 1978 is a site-specific sculptural installation which dramatises a fictional historian’s research into the Leper Chapel, Cambridge, in the late 20th Century. Blending historical fact with esoteric interpretation, the exhibition reflects on how meaning and order is imposed on the past – and how problems in the present come to inform our understanding of history. The work incorporates found and fabricated objects, drawings, sound, text, and video.
The exhibition stages the fictional historian’s office directly within the Leper Chapel, and by doing so opens a dialogue between the building, and how we interpret it. The fictional historian believes that a violent uprising took place in the Leper Chapel in the medieval period, and interprets all the historical evidence he finds to support this claim.
This work developed from research into the material and social history of the building. Archival materials relating to the Leper Chapel, including 19th Century antiquarian reports, archaeological objects, and survey drawings, have been used to develop a fictional world of historical misinterpretation, paranoid speculation, and apocalyptic visions.
MAX LIVESEY
The Bathers, 2024 (installation view, detail).
Found object installation including timber, textiles, ceramics, prints, and paper.
No Love No Use, 2024.
Sculptural diorama with sound and found objects.
Squint (3), 2026 (installation view).
Site specific sculpture with ND gel.
The Promise of Happiness, 2025.
Moving image sculpture with mild steel, aluminium, RGB matrices, and single board computer.
Rotting Apple, 2025.
PLA and adhesive.
Tape Machine Confession, 2024 (installation view).
Site sensitive sculpture with sound and found objects.
Pieta, 2025 (installation view).
Site specific sculpture with rope, elastic bands, shoelaces, pins and belt buckles.
Three Arches with Text, 2026 (installation view).
Pen and gouache on paper.
EXHIBITIONS (GROUP)
Detritus
(Sediment Collective)
8 Blythe Hill, Catford, London.
11th-16th June 2026.
MRes Research Journeys
Hangar Space, RCA Battersea, London.
26th-28th May 2026.
(ASDF Collective)
Three Rooms, Walthamstow, London.
14th-17th May 2026.
Brixton Jamm, London.
10th April 2026.
GuestBook
Royal College of Art Library, London.
9th-20th February 2026.
Weirdness of the Real
Oriel Canfas, Cardiff.
29th November-14th December 2025.
Plant a Lamppost in the Exhibition
Curated by Teng Wang, Jialu Shen, and Sinan Wang
BOLD Theatre, Elephant and Castle, London.
26th-29th August 2025.
Outside of Formality: Street Furniture, Appropriation, Spatial Justice
Curated by Sinan Wang
Upper Gulbenkian Gallery, Royal College of Art, London.
31st March-2nd April 2025.
Rites of Ruins
(ASDF Collective)
Safehouse 1, Peckham, London.
21st-23rd March 2025.
White Noise 48
St. John on Bethnal Green Church, Bethnal Green, London.
29th November 2024.
Big Screen Showcase / Royal College of Art
BBC Television Centre, White City, London.
11th September 2024.
Eastbound / Arcs of Visibility
Way Out East Gallery, University of East London.
26th - 28th July 2024.
WRITING (FICTION)
“Screen Recordings (Five Very Short Stories About Phones)”
Published in Blee(eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)t! Anthology Zine
September 2025.
WRITING (NON-FICTION)
“Waiting for Something That’s Not Coming: Reflections on a Sculpture”
Published in Everyday Life: International Journal of Public Culture, Art and Design, Volume 1, Issue 1.
21st September 2026.
“The Unperformed: Eisenstein’s Set Design for Heartbreak House”
Published online by Drawing Matter.
13th March 2026.
“Book Review: Hot Victorians by Aaron Radford-Wattley”
Published in The Victorian, no. 81.
March 2026.
“A Politics of Grass”
Talk given as part of the “Take Back the Land” symposium, Royal College of Art.
15th May 2025.