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Helen Sear RA (born 1955) is a British visual artist specialising in photography and moving image.
Helen Sear was born in Banbury, England, in 1955 and grew up in the West Midlands. [1] Her mother was a teacher and her father a maxillo-facial surgeon and she has two younger brothers.
She was introduced to the natural environment through regular family walks, during which her father shared his knowledge of plants and wildlife. [2] This early exposure nurtured her connection with the natural world and shaped her enduring interest in visualizing and interpreting elements of the landscape as bodies inseparable from our own human forms [3] (e.g., Anatomy of a Tree, Royal Academy, 2025). [4]
Sear studied Fine Art at Reading University and University College London, and she studied at Slade School. In the late 1980s, she worked primarily through installation, performance, and film. Her photographic works were included in the 1991 British Council exhibition "De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain", [5] which toured Latin America and Eastern Europe. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
She was awarded a PhD by publication in 2009 at the University of Wales Newport titled Reconstructing Experience. [1]
Sear was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in March 2024. [12]
Sear's work first came to prominence internationally through her participation in the British Council's 1991 touring exhibition De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain, which toured Eastern Europe and Latin America until 1998. [13]
Her practice, rooted in Magic Realism, Surrealism, and Conceptual Art, frequently explores themes of vision, touch and relationships between figure and landscape. [14]
She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, with notable solo shows in Copenhagen at Martin Asbæk Gallery, New York (Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn), Stuttgart, Eindhoven, and London at, both at the Anderson O’Day Gallery and Zelda Cheatle Gallery, where she developed a technique of making (non-contact) prints from 2 negatives that disrupted a conventional approach to portraiture, blurring the boundaries of both facial recognition and figure and ground. [15]
In 2015, Helen Sear was selected as the first woman to represent Wales with a solo exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale. Curated by Stuart Cameron and Ffotogallery and commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales, the exhibition, titled …the rest is smoke, was housed at Santa Maria Ausiliatrice in Venice. [16]
Sear's work consistently blurs the boundaries between photography, and other Fine Art traditions , notably painting. [2] She often manipulates images by layering, re-photographing, digitally drawing, and texturing surfaces. Her Becoming Forest series involved tracing lines of forest growth with a digital pen, juxtaposed with foresters’ fluorescent spray marks, highlighting both natural processes and human intervention. [17]
Much of her recent work centers on rural Wales and France, where she examines landscapes as both sites of beauty and zones of control, production, and consumption. [18] She has also drawn on her experience of moving through forests, collecting imagery over extended periods to produce highly crafted installations that require deep viewer engagement. [19]
Sear’s video work wahaha biota was made during a year long Arts Council of England commission to work with the Forestry Commision England in Dalby Forest Yorkshire [20] and with curator Stuart Cameron, then director of Crescent Arts Scarborough has been shown across the UK, Netherlands, and Switzerland (2018–2019). [21]
Her studio is in Burgundy, France, where she lives. She is married to the Swiss painter Andreas Rüthi.
Inside The View, Klompching Gallery, New York, US, 2009 [22]
Sightlines and Pastoral Monuments, Klompching Gallery, New York, US 2012 [26]
Helen Sear, Klompchng Gallery, New York, US 2015 [28]
Helen Sear: New Work, Klompching Gallery, New York, US 2017 [29]
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