Helen Sear

Helen Sear presents a series of large-scale works that combine multiple images to emphasise the indivisibility of the human and the natural worlds. In giving equal status to the human and natural, Sear observes the landscape as another body.

In the lightbox Caetera Fumus a rapeseed field is pierced by arrows inspired by a painting of Saint Sebastian by Mantegna in Venice where the work was exhibited in the Biennale (2015); in the extraordinary multi-panel glasswork, Cold Frame, a cold frame is enlarged to the size of a greenhouse; and in Winter Stacka landscape is constructed from a hundred images stitched together images.

Sear questions whether it is possible to have a view of nature without incorporating the human presence. She emphasises that what she records is not something that is separate or distant from her. Instead she is a part of nature and the experience is immersive. One way she does this is by disrupting a fixed-point perspective in many of her large composite works. The viewer follows her as she moves around, looks up and down, travels from the front to the back.

In denying a fixed-point perspective and stitching her images together, she creates multi-layered landscapes. Ultimately, what Sear achieves in her composites is an active, rather than a static viewing.