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Helen
Sear
Helen Sear uses projection techniques to combine layer upon layer of
different images in order to photograph the un-photographable, or they have
been produced within the computer, which Sear likens to an archeological site
where software is used to construct or reveal layers of digitally manipulated
sub-strata. Sear appropriates the computer to make new images which she sees as
"potential future biological specimens".
| Between
There and Now is a retrospective exhibition which brings together the
most outstanding works produced over the past 10 years by one of the most
notable contemporary British artists, Helen Sear. This exhibition presents
Sear's ongoing exploration of the relationship between vision and memory
with an array of works that examine notions of the real and the
imagined including single colour photographs, diptychs, light-box
installations, LED embedded prints which create star-like constellations,
and video projections. |
Flown No.1 1997 Hayward
Gallery
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Within
her work, Sear's subject matter ranges from Landscapes of nature, culture
and technology, to The Body, be it human or animal. Sear's chosen approach
to her subject matter ranges from subtle interventions into the field of
vision through to spectacular inventions of new perspectives which have
been sculpted by the artist with layers of light and image. Throughout
all of these works Sear's approach has remained consistent as she seeks to
"articulate the space between the instant of the photograph and
it's subsequent reconstruction and re-presentation in the presence of the
viewer." |
As she constructs and
manipulates different visual perspectives, Sear intervenes in the process of
looking. The majority of her works are large-scale prints which seduce the
viewer with their intense colours and the lush materiality of the surface of
the photographic image. However, through the seduction, the viewer also
becomes unsettled as Sear presents layers of different viewing distances with
dynamic perspectives combined as if by magic into a single field of vision.
Sear' exploration of space and time, verses the 'truth' encapsulated by the
photograph is seen in its simplest in the series Green House, Yellow Lemon.
These
two images are taken from the same location following a six month interval,
the abandoned greenhouse, the scene of organic chaos replaced by a shopping
complex, the model of modern town planning. Brought together in this way Sear
has given us two perspectives, two views to be reconciled as the same. In her
later works, these views are melded into one image, giving the viewer the
sensation of witnessing multiple events or actions of her subjects. Again the
truth of the image is called into question. Will the bird in Leaving the
Museum ever fly away as Sear's image suggests? Just as light tricks the
eye, Sear's lens tricks the brain.
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