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I could say that I was in love with her, but it was not in an ordinary sense. I was consumed by her, so that it became painful. I wanted to merge with her entirely, to become her. After the accident the nature of this intense connection with her became much more dangerous for me, as if the things had become polarised and the differences between us became more erratic - swinging violently between attraction and repulsion…

In the years and months preceding It has to be this way, Lindsay Seers’ first exhibition at Matt’s Gallery, a catastrophic accident has caused a chain of events that take us on a journey through history where everything is connected.

In a recent visit to Stockholm, the artist photographed anything that was associated with her step-sister, Christine, and followed streams of associations and connections attempting to reconstruct a past in which characters move across history and slip from one person to another. Within the gallery, a viewing chamber forms part of a sculptural installation housing a double-screen video projection and two monitor works that use several characters to stage the differences between renaissance and modern thought on art, philosophy and science.

Drawing on historical theories of vision, Seers creates highly personal narratives by interweaving concepts of science, philosophy and photographic theory into the work, in an ongoing investigation into how cinematic and photographic technologies shape us. These narratives are punctuated by incredible plot devices – stalkings, burglaries, shipwrecks – that mimic the rupture at the heart of image production, creating a dramatisation of selfhood in all its melancholy and failure. By re-casting photography as an act that actually creates experiences rather than records them, or as David Burrows describes it in Human Camera, by creating ‘an indexical process that is transformative’, the boundaries of photography in Seers’ work are truly extended.

The opening paragraph is an extract from a novel concerning Christine Parkes, Seers and a character known only as S. In 1999 Christine was involved in an accident that left her with severe retrograde and anterior grade memory loss. She went missing in Rome in 2001.

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Biography
Education 1999–2001 MA Fine Art Goldsmiths College, London; 1991–1995 BA (Hons) Fine Art (sculpture and media) The Slade School of Fine Art, London Forthcoming Exhibitions 2009 Altermodern, 4th Tate Triennial, Tate Britain Solo Exhibitions 2007 Swallowing Black Maria, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam 2006 Human Camera, Mali Salon, Rijeka, Croatia; The truth was always there, The Collection, Lincoln; I can't tell you, Grundy Gallery, Blackpool; Don't look through me, City Gallery, Leicester 2005 Image in Me, Market Gallery, Glasgow; Eyes of Others, Gallery of Photography, Dublin; I saw the light, Gasworks Gallery, London 2003 You said that without moving your lips, Limerick City Gallery, Ireland; Caliodoscopio, Museo del Barro, Asuncion, Paraguay 2002 Photoscoptucus, Public work, Camden Lock/Henley–on–Thames 2001 Black Bag, Old Operating Theatre Museum, London; For the dead travel fast, Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery 1999 Autocannibal, Laure Genillard Gallery, London 1998 Cannibal, Old Museum Art Centre, Belfast 1997 Knock Knock, Artists Work Programme, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Selected Group Exhibitions 2007 Cinemart, The Auditorium, Rome; Foreign Bodies, White Box, New York; The Believers, Touring show in five cities in Norway with performances, Stavanger, Forde and Bergen 2006 UBS Opening, Tate Modern, London; Metropolis Rise, CQL Design Centre, Shanghai, DIAF 2006@798 Space, Beijing, China; Inside (performance) Great Eastern Hotel, Masonic Temple; Don't Look Through Me, Y Theatre, Leicester; Performance/screening at Witte de With/Tent Rotterdam; John Skies or Sally Swims, UKS Gallery, Oslo; Wandering Rocks, Gimpel Fils Gallery, London 2005 Wunderkammer, The Collection, Lincoln 2004 Adam, Smart Projects, Amsterdam; Mind the Gap, La Friche, Triangle, Marseille; Sharttered Love, Keith Talent Gallery, London; Eating at Another's Table, Metropole Galleries, Folkestone; Tonight, Studio Voltaire, London; A Variety Night of Ventriloquism, FACT, Liverpool; Mesmer, Temporarycontemporary, London; Haunted Media, Site Gallery, Sheffield 2003 The Physical World, APT, London; Sphere, Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; A Taste for Sham, Studio 1.1, London; The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man, The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle

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