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g39: Helen Sear - 30 Jan 2009 to 7 Mar 2009 Current Exhibition |
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Helen Sear
Charm 2008 Courtesy of the artist |
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Helen Sear preview 30th January 2009 31th January - 7th March 2009 Helen Sear�s photographic work prompts instinctive gut emotions from the viewer: fear, desire, entrapment, joy. Her visceral and sensual imagery is carefully selected and manipulated to evoke complex and often indefinable or unfinished responses, as if we are being presented with a pictorial fragment of a tale. Throughout Sear�s practice is an ongoing enquiry into beauty and nostalgia, ranging from the grand opulence of Italian interiors or a rural vista, to abandoned detritus in a wooded glade or a forgotten ornament. Sear�s work is often indulgent and seductive, the imagery is saturated and rich but has at its core the paradox of looking without seeing. For her exhibition at g39 she uses a stock of imagery, a personal language that she has built up over a number of years: the landscape, the glassy eyes of taxidermied nature, and the deserted cage. She investigates the relationships between the viewer and the viewed, the hunter and the hunted. She often compounds the act of looking by removing the returned gaze of the other by closing or obscuring the eyes, or presenting only the back of the head or a reflection. The viewer of the image has the �view� obscured by someone else. While the reciprocation of human interaction � I look and you look back � is an indication that we understand each other, Sear interrupts this exchange. The exhibition coincides with the launch of a new g39 publication of Helen Sear�s work in association with University of Wales, Newport. Tale is a collection of works evaluating the breadth of work produced by Sear since 1992, and holds the key to this exhibition. It highlights the occurrence of narrative throughout her work as well as the necessary frictions and connections between adjacent images. Previously her work has been viewed in chapters, one coherent body of research following another in carefully balanced exhibitions; with this exhibition and the accompanying publication and essay we can begin to see the connections and links that make Sear�s work an enthralling experience. Tale also includes an accompanying narrative text written by David Chandler, director of Photoworks in Brighton (ISBN 978-0-9541810-7-9). |
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