exhibitions:
Double Knowledge
Lindsay Seers (b. 1966) lives and works in the Isle of Sheppey. Seers earned an MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College (2001), and BA Hons Fine Art at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (1995). Selected recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Cold Light’, Matt’s Gallery, London (2022),‘Every Thought There Ever Was’, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2020), ’Vanishing Twin’ (Tetragametic Chimerism), Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2019) ‘Suffering’, MONA, Tasmania (2017), ‘Nowhere Less Now7’, Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea, Wales (2016).
Seers’ Optograms (mouth camera) series evolved from the artist’s desire to use her own body as a camera to confront subject/object hierarchies within photography. By placing light sensitive paper in her mouth and using her lips as the aperture and shutter, Seers would develop the images in a black sack resulting in enigmatic circular images tinged red by the blood of her cheeks. Casting herself as both subject and object, Seers subverted established notions of the gaze – “it was an act of cannibalism in a sense…if I was the camera there is no dislocation”, she says. The human camera images are often exhibited alongside a documentary photograph, taken at the same time. The relationship between the two images sets up narrative threads between two moments captured – one internalised and the other externalised.
Seers’ work belongs in important international collections including the Tate Collection; UK Arts Council Collection; Rugby Art Gallery Collection (CAS); Artangel Collection; MONA collection; Marwan. T. Assaf Collection; Museo del Barro Collection, Asuncion, Paraguay. Her large scale work has been exhibited internationally at museums and centres including the notable SMK (National Gallery of Denmark); Venice Biennale 2015; Hayward Gallery, UK; MONA, Tasmania; Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden; Smart Project Space, Amsterdam; Kiasma, Finland; Turner Contemporary, UK; Tate Triennial, UK; TPW, Canada; Sami Centre for Art, Norway; Centre for Contemporary Art Poland; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, UK; Sharjah Art Foundation (The Flying Saucer), UAE; Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan; E-Werk, Luckenwalde/Berlin, Germany.
Seers’ work has been recognised with several prestigious grants and awards such as the Sharjah Art Foundation Production Award, UAE; Le Jeu de Paume production award, France; the Paul Hamlyn Award; the Derek Jarman Award; AHRC Award; a number of Wellcome Trust Awards and Arts Council and British Council Awards in support of the works.
