It has to be this way 1.5
Lindsay Seers
23 October 2010 – 2
January 2011
Preview: Saturday 23 October, 2 –
4pm
In 1999 a young woman was involved in a moped
accident. She suffered damage to both her short and
long-term memory and
was left unable to decipher her experiences. A year later she went missing in
Rome and has subsequently not been found.
It has to be this
way1.5 is a new commission by aspex and marks
Lindsay Seers’ continued attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding the
disappearance of the young woman, her stepsister, Christine Parkes.
The
artist, obsessed with the transformative powers of photography, follows streams
of associations; her stepsister’s boyfriend’s diary, her
mother’s memories alongside a shared archive of images and papers,
determine the outline of her ongoing journey and the form for the unfolding
narrative of the work. The viewer enters a structure in which everything is
connected, a memory theatre painted blue, a giant star, a doubled video, and a
documentary and novella that weave together a complex set of relationships which
shift at every turn.
What constitutes the artistic practice of Lindsay
Seers is not mere storytelling, but a matrix where there is no formal separation
between the conceptual investigation of the act of photography, the camera as
apparatus, the common desire for film and photography to act as evidence of
events, and the complex historical and personal synchronicities of the events
themselves. What we are witnessing in the work of Seers is not so much a
detached systematic outline of these relationships, but the unfolding of the
creative
process
, where the act of observation and understanding influences the outcome of
events. Through Seers’ photographic explorations the past is constantly
reconfigured, as if it contains an infinite virtual potential for different
outcomes, which are all already embedded in one another.
Mead Gallery,
University of Warwick, will also be exhibiting the work of Lindsay Seers. The
installation It has to be this way2 will be exhibited from 9
October until 11 December 2010.
Lindsay Seers is based in London. She
was recently awarded the Derek Jarman Award with a commission of four short
films for Channel 4. Her recent exhibitions include It has to be this
way2, at the National Gallery of Denmark (2010), Persistence
of Vision, FACT (2010), Steps into the Arcane, Kuntsmuseum,
Thurgau, Switzerland (2010), Altermodern, Fourth Tate Triennial, Tate
Britain (2009), It has to be this way, Matt’s Gallery, London
(2009), and Event Horizon, (performance/screening), Royal Academy of
Art, London (2008).
EVENT INFORMATION
Gallery Talk
Thursday 11 November, 6pm
Artist David
Burrows will give a critical response to Lindsay Seers’ work.
Editors’ Notes
It has to be this way1.5
continues aspex’s intriguing and lively
exhibitions, projects and offsite programme. Founded in 1981,
aspex, Portsmouth’s leading contemporary art gallery
moved into new premises in the Vulcan Building on the waterfront at Gunwharf
Quays in December 2006. The transformation of this disused naval storehouse into
a bright and inviting arts space, combines the best of the old and the new, and
won a Royal Institute of British Architects award in 2007.
aspex
is open 11am – 4pm daily, admission is FREE
To arrange
interviews, press trips, more press
informat
ion and visuals, please contact Clive Caswell, Exhibitions & Gallery Manager
on 023 9277 8080 or clive@aspex.org.uk
aspex, The
Vulcan Building, Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, PO1 3BF
t: 023 9277
8080, e: info@aspex.org.uk, www.aspex.org.uk
Image: Lindsay Seers,
It has to be this way, 2009 [installation view at Matt's Gallery],
courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London
