Curator Jens Hauser has devised an exhibition in which skin becomes a symbol: skin is the largest organ in the human body making up 16% of our body weight; it is a semi-permeable membrane demarcating the outside world from the internal spaces of the body. As technology becomes more sophisticated, so our notion of what is organic or 'natural' and what is man-made becomes blurred. In this exhibition the idea of an interface - the point of connection, the place in between one thing and another - is challenged.

The works on view in in our galleries and public spaces show the changing horizons of our reality, materialized in borders and limits that are no longer closed, impermeable surfaces: individual identities, specialty fields and even nations find new meanings in available technological extensions and trans-disciplinary collaborations. The skin as a permeable membrane, with reception as well as transmission capabilities, is a metaphor for the unstable limits of our bodies and existences.

The artworks in sk-interfaces express the potential of tools and methods that are being used in multiple specialist disciplines, pointing to their possible ethical implications and social concerns. Artists have always used, and often subverted, contemporary techniques of their times to create places for thought and debate. Today, with the convergence of different media, artists comprise bits, cells and genes in every kind of combination. Biotechnology, trans-species relationships, technological body extensions, wearable computing, tele-presence, biological architecture and self-experimentation are some of the methods and practices explored in sk-interfaces.

sk-interfaces launches our Human Futures programme in Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture with works that have germinated in a multi-national context and that aesthetically embody our uncertainties with regards to our 'human futures'.

This exhibition is no longer in our building.