Exhibition at Fotogalleriet, Oslo
January 2018
Developing from their 2017 residency collaboration with Mauritius-born, British artist Lindsay Seers, Fotogalleriet and PRAKSIS are excited to announce the first solo exhibition in Norway by this widely acclaimed practitioner.
Throughout her career, Lindsay Seers has expressed a problematic relation to photography in terms of what it does through its imperial gaze onto the body of the other, in particular with women. This prompted her to rethink the relationship between the subject and the object in photography; a process she developed by turning for instance herself into a camera, by finding a more performative approach into the event of picture-taking, as well as by addressing how colonisation of peoples’ minds happens by means of scientific and technological exploitation.
Seers’ work is obsessed with biographical narrative, with a particular interest in notions of how ‘truths’ are constructed, and growing from the belief that every individual is unique, yet may become representative of the whole narration of human life. While dramatic and spectacular stories dominate media outlets, Seers feels that everyday occurrences contain just as much relevance –for Seers, the seemingly mundane holds the extraordinary.
Seers’ work often weaves complex linguistic and visual webs. Her imagery ranges from the seductive and intimate to the visceral and disturbing, developing an enigmatic poetry that refuses easy rationalisation. For Fotogalleriet, three core strands intermix throughout the exhibition space.
A series of three new works — including Vanishing Twin (2018/19), tetragametic chimerism (2018/19), and Michael (2018/19) — develop from Seers’ ongoing interest in individuals with differently coloured-irises, in Western countries medically termed heterochromia iridium. In Seers’s work, this trait forms a central point of reference within pieces that place in question accepted scientific and politico-legal concepts of race, heritage and individual identity.
Numbers hold significance for the protagonists featured throughout the works on view. For Seers herself, 23 resonates as a number with a legend that Freud identified this number of sessions as necessary in cycles of recovery. Taking it as a symbol of cause and effect, 23 Second Films (2019) is compiled from a series of short cinematic works that Seers initially offered as gifts to people she had met during her 2017 residency in Oslo. Some of these later developed into visual conversations of specifically time-based video exchanges between her and some of the artists she worked alongside — namely Ove Kvavik, Jeremy Olson, and Nina Torp, as well as with her long-term collaborator and partner, Keith Sargent.
Placed between the other newly produced works, Three Minute Wonders (2013), was commissioned for television by Britain’s Channel 4 on the occasion of Seers winning the prestigious Jarman Award. Playing with the auto-biographical documentary format, this deliberately unfinished series of four, three-minute films, offers insight into the history of Seers’ practice.
“Lindsay has a fascinating mind and a tireless curiosity. The way that she see things, combined with her fascination and knowledge of philosophy and science opens up new world for us. It has been incredibly rewarding to bring to completion one of her works through her stay in Norway. It is through bringing together people across borders and perspectives, as through this residency and exhibition collaboration, that we truly create new realms of possibility.” Says Nicholas John Jones, Curator of the exhibition.
About the Artist
Lindsay Seers holds a long-standing relationship with Norway by having returned to these lands, whose jurisdiction as a nation-state reach the Arctic, at several points in time during her career. While reviewing the 2011 international Biennale LIAF, in the Lofoten archipelago for Aftenposten, art critic Kjetil Røed described Seers’ piece as “By far the best work of the exhibition.” Seers lives on the Isle of Sheppy and works in London. She has exhibited at some of the most prestigious international venues for the presentation of contemporary art practices including Tate, London; MONA, Tasmania; Hayward Gallery, London; SMK (National Gallery of Denmark), Copenhagen; the Venice Biennale 2015; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; KIASMA, Helsinki; Turner Contemporary; Tate Triennial; Gallery TPW, Toronto; the Sami Centre for Contemporary Art, Kárášjohka, among many others. Grants and awards include the Sharjah Art Foundation Production Award; Le Jeu de Paume production award for the Toulouse Festival; the Paul Hamlyn Award; and the Derek Jarman Award. Her work is held in private and public collections, and Tate recently acquired one of her large scale installations titled Extramission 6.
About the Collaboration Between Fotogalleriet and PRAKSIS
In 2017 Fotogalleriet and PRAKSIS invited artist Lindsay Seers to lead the four-week residency programme titled A Global State Of Pareidolia, during which she worked alongside fellow Norwegian and international practioners. While in Oslo, Seers engaged in cross-disciplinary dialogue with local scientists, researchers and others, and filmed part of the work which will be on view at Fotogalleriet. (More information about the residency is available at www.praksisoslo.org).
About Fotogalleriet
Started in a basement in 1977 by renowned artists Dag Alveng and Tom Sandberg, together with Bjørn Høyum, as the first institution of its kind for hothousing cutting edge photographic practices in Scandinavia, Fotogalleriet has since then been dedicated to exhibiting local and international lens-based art practices, and analysing the rapidly expanding nature of a field unrestricted by technological and aesthetic shifts. Through its commitment to research and engagement with artists, Fotogalleriet is a leading institution within the field of image making.
