CURRENT EXHIBITION

WE SHOW HERE, DECEMBER 1 – 24, 2016

Cara Barer  Elaine Duigenan  Odette England  Max de Esteban  Cornelia Hediger

Matthew-Robert Hughes  Doug Keyes  Sarah Lynch  Robert Moran

Jim Naughten  Helen Sear  Vojtech V. Slama  Frederic Weber

During the month of December, and leading up to the Christmas and New Year holidays, we are exhibiting a wonderfully diverse selection of contemporary photographs. Each of the artworks are small to medium-sized, framed and ready to be taken away. The perfect 'gift of art'. 

If you don't see what you're looking for on the gallery walls, let us know! We'll dive into the gallery inventory and help you to find the perfect artwork. 

The gallery has artworks ranging in values from $300 through to $68,000. So, whatever your budget, we're pretty certain we have you covered.

Each Saturday, we'll also be offering some special sales, on both artworks and photobooks. These offers will be limited to those specific days, and collectors will be alerted via the Gallery Newsletter. If you're not on our mailing list, you can SIGN UP HERE.

HELEN SEAR: NEW WORK RELEASED

WILD FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS (2015)

Wild Flower Arrangement No. 1 (Daucus Carota)

Size: 39.3"x39.3" image on 43.3"x43.3" sheet
Medium: Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Cotton Rag
Edition: 5+2AP

Daucus Carota, wild carrot, bird's nest, bishop's lace and Queen Anne's lace, so named as the red flower in its center is thought to represent a droplet of blood, where the wife of Kings James I pricked herself while making lace. Another story refers to the earlier Anne Boleyn, the beheaded wife of King Henry VIII, the white flower representing the lace around her neck and the red center, the point of decapitation.

These wild flowers, found at the side of agricultural fields and roadside ditches were once popular as a contraceptive for women, and simultaneously in ancient ritual and spells, to increase sexual potency in men.

Helen Sear's Wild Flower Arrangements show the flower heads of Daucus Carota, at different stages of maturity—which often display at the same time on the same stem—and have been cut and rearranged in unnatural configurations, as constructed portraits. The complex beauty of the weed that thrives in wasteland, is heightened by its isolation within an interior space, reminiscent of the opulent surroundings of society portraiture.

VIEW ONLINE

Please contact Debra Klomp Ching for purchase inquiries. 

AIPAD 2016: HELEN SEAR

Caetera Fumus, 2015

Edition: 5 + 2AP

Size: 41"x33"

Medium: C-Type mounted to plexi

Year: 2015

Helen Sear is renowned as one of Wales’ most significant contemporary artists. Her practice can be characterized by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the co-existence of the human, animal, and natural worlds.

With an exemplary track record for producing high quality, conceptually rigorous work, Helen Sear’s current work shows particular maturity and sophistication, seamlessly moving between expanded notions of photography, sculpture and video, with the artist exhibiting great command of different materials and production processes.

The photographic artwork pictured here, was showcased at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), where she represented Wales with a solo exhibition in the Santa Maria Ausilliatrice. Caetera Fumus subtly references Mantegna’s third painting of Saint Sebastian, using it as a spatial guide onto which Sear has placed her own imagery and meaning. The vivid color of the rape seed, the red arrows piercing canvas and air rather than flesh, along with the clever layering of perspective and material, all combine to suggest an untouchable reality.

Helen Sear’s work has been published in Arts Review, Creative Camera, Art Newspaper and Art Monthly amongst others. Collections holding her work include Ernst & Young, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council (Rome) and the Paul Wilson Collection. She lives and works in Wales (UK).

NYPD: EXHIBITION / GALLERY REVIEW

"Klompching Gallery Reopens with Helen Sear"
Catherine Troiano, New York Photography Diary

Image: Gallery Installation ©Klompching Gallery 

"Last Wednesday, Klompching Gallery re-opened in their new location at 89 Water Street, DUMBO. 

The inaugural show at Klompching Gallery’s new space is a celebration of Helen Sear’s work; the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. The works are not new to exhibition, with much of it having been featured in the previous shows, however, Sear’s organic oeuvre is a well thought out complement to the new space and comes as she is representing Wales at the 56th Venice Biennale, with a solo exhibition in the Santa Maria Ausilliatrice. Sear’s work is very contemplative and the new space at Klompching is a worthy environment in which to contemplate. Hung with plenty of room for our thoughts to expand around the work, the peaceful atmosphere allows us to consider the questions surrounding identity, gender and the photographic medium that Sear addresses."

The full review can be read on the New York Photography Diary website. 

HELEN SEAR: EXQUISITE MASTERY

Venice Biennale Review – Pippa Koszerek for Artist Newsletter

"Helen Sear’s sumptuous photographic prints and films, in the Wales in Venice exhibition, reveal layers and depth lent by the physical materiality of these sculpturally displayed pieces. Her exquisite mastery of the manipulated image creates abstracted experiences of nature that can be profound.

But of course they would be – Sear is technically and conceptually rigorous, often returning to film and photograph works anew many times over. Time, space and renewal are central elements within her practice.

Stack, 2015 © Helen Sear

This is a deeply sensory exhibition, subtly curated to sit within the architecture of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice church. There is a kind of ritual and ceremony, an enchantment propelled by the rhythm of the flickering spliced edit of company of trees.

The repetitious sounds of birdsong and chainsaw follow the viewer into the Sacrista where birds feed, dart and return in altar and the ground swells and expands as we look down onto the beginning and end of things, at what could be a marble basin but is in fact a video-manipulated pool of water reflecting trees high above.

Moving through this exhibition is a captivating and magical experience. stacks, a huge photographic piece which lines the entirety of one wall, is a life-size confrontation of farmed logs. Composed of multiple images printed on aluminium and stacked along the wall, this black and white piece cleverly refracts and retains colour and light, ever changing as the viewer walks past, creating an effect not dissimilar to that experienced in nature itself.

Sear’s final work subtly references Mantegna’s third painting of Saint Sebastian, using it as a spatial guide onto which she places her own imagery and meaning. The vivid colour of the rape seed, the red arrows piercing canvas and air rather than flesh, along with the clever layering of perspective and material, suggest an untouchable reality. Sear’s contemplative and exhilarating exhibition is a visual revelation".–Pippa Koszerek

This review is quoted from a more expansive piece, published on the Artist Newsletter website here.

HELEN SEAR: WALES IN VENICE

The Experience Wales in Venice website has just been launched.

The website provides an excellent overview of the Welsh Pavilion at the Santa Maria Austiliatrice, including interviews with the artist, Helen Sear,  and the curator, Stuart Cameron. In addition to being a spotlight on the exhibition and artworks, the website provides an excellent insight into the Welsh Pavilion overall – information for teachers/educators, a spotlight on the artist/invigilators and background information on the entire team involved. 

Importantly, if you're not in Venice to see the exhibition in person—which opens to the public today—it also provides a slide show of all the artworks that form the exhibition.  

The website will continue to upload news about '... the rest is smoke' throughout the 56th Venice Biennale, which runs through to November 22, 2015. 

HELEN SEAR: 56th VENICE BIENNALE

We are delighted to share news of Helen Sear's exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale.

"... the rest is smoke"

9 May – 22 November, 2015

Santa Maria Austiliatrice

Known as one of Wales’ most significant contemporary artists, Helen Sear's practice can be characterized by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the co-existence of the human, animal, and natural worlds.

With an exemplary track record for producing high quality, conceptually rigorous work, Helen Sear’s current work shows particular maturity and sophistication, seamlessly moving between expanded notions of photography, sculpture and video, with the artist exhibiting great command of different materials and production processes.

Following the press preview, and on the occasion of the special luncheon to preview the exhibition with curators and critics, we're pleased to share here, a video walk-through of the exhibition. 

Please return to the gallery Blog as we reveal more information regarding Helen Sear's artworks, commissioned especially for the Venice Biennale.

Acquisition inquiries should be directed to Debra Klomp Ching

info@klompching.com / +1 212 796 2070

AIPAD 2015: HELEN SEAR

Inside The View, No. 10 (2005)

Series Title: Inside The View

Number of Artworks at AIPAD: 8

Edition: 5 + 2APs

Size: 13.25"x13.24" image on 15.75"x15.75" sheet

Medium: C-Type

Year: 2005–2008

Inside The View is an exceptional collection of photographs, wherein Helen Sear addresses the notion of work, labor of the hand and time in the process of image making. Sear also contributes to the long history of montage by superimposing two images — one a portrait of a woman and the other a landscape. The image is then erased through a complex and painstaking process of digital drawing, with a lace-like network of lines based upon the patterns of sewing or hand woven lace making.

The result is a wonderful play on vision, whereby the figure and ground appear and disappear within the resulting lines of erasure. In many ways, the lines of erasure are the image; they form a veil to look at and to look through. Amongst other things, Sear is intrigued with the viewer’s habits of looking, and in this context she views the photographic medium as not fixed or entirely knowable.  

“Within the multiple layers of Sear’s art we face the complex questions of work and invention. The innovative labour of image craft is central here. She does things few others do with the medium ... It is a restless process of intellectual risk, aesthetic demand and technical experiment.”—David Campany (2006).

In making these images, Sear has been inspired by the works of Helen Chadwick and Jo Spence, as well as that of the northern romantic tradition of painting. The title of the work refers to a series of collages, A L’Interieur de la Vue, by Max Ernst.

Helen Sear’s work has been published in Arts Review, Creative Camera, Art Newspaper and Art Monthly amongst others. Collections holding her work include Ernst & Young, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council (Rome) and the Paul Wilson Collection. She lives and works in Wales (UK).

In 2014, Helen Sear was selected by the Welsh Arts Council to represent Wales at the 56th Venice Biennale, with a solo exhibition at the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Via Garibaldi, Venice, May 9 – November 22, 2015. 

HELEN SEAR: THE WAKELIN AWARD 2013

Gallery artist, Helen Sear, has been awarded the prestigious Wakelin Award 2013. The award is given annually to a Welsh artist, whose work is purchased for the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery's permanent collection. 

Helen Sear's high-definition video installation, Chameleon, was selected for the award by Nicholas Thornton – Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum, Wales. Chameleon depicts a sunflower, filmed at night and lit by torchlight.

"I'm delighted that Chameleon will be joining a major public collection in Swansea and I'm pleased to have selected. The Wakelin Award offers recognition for artists such as myself based in Wales and I'd like to thank the organisers for their generosity. I look forward to my video installation joining the work of both past and future award holders".—Helen Sear

Helen Sear is represented in the US exclusively by Klompching Gallery, with three solo exhibitions presented since 2009. Her most recent photographic artworks can be viewed online HERE.

Chameleon, 2013. Video Projection, loop  of 14 minutes © Helen Sear

Helen Sear Exhibits at Fototropia

Helen Sear has been selected for an exhibition at Fototropia in Guatamala. The curatorial statement for Fototropia's inaugural exhibition states:

"We invite the Guatemalan public to be a part of an exhibit without precedent in our country, which looks to break traditional art schemes and create a new physical and mental state for the art scene in our region ... We believe in organizing an exhibit that allows the interpretation of the art from a personal point of view creating a new critical way of thinking about image".

In addition to more recent artworks, the curators have selected photographs from Sear's extensive archive, including the Spot series. This series was commissioned by Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire (UK).

 

Spot 1 (2003) ©Helen Sear

The intention of this series of portraits was to emulate their human counterparts, the hall’s ancestors, and to challenge the dominant position of human over animal. The photographs have been reconstructed digitally, masking over the eyes of the ornithological specimens. By intervening in the process of looking – an ongoing theme of Sear's overall artistic practice – the viewer is forced to question their relationship between themselves and the viewed

The exhibition opened on March7th, and continues through April 22nd, 2013.
If you have an interest in acquiring artworks from the Spot series, please contact the gallery.

HELEN SEAR: Two Events, Two Cities, Two Days

Tonight, at The Photographer's Gallery in London, Gost Books launches its inaugural publications; including Brisées by Helen Sear.

The publication launch date is no coincidence. It coincides with 'Lure' a major solo exhibition, of recent and new artwork at the Oriel Davies Gallery in Wales (UK); opening with a reception on February 2nd. In the gallery catalogue, it's stated:

"One of Wales' most important and insightful artists, Helen's pratice is characterized by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the natural world and the startling beauty of her work."

In addition to sculpture, film and installations, two bodies of work that will be on show in the exhibition, are Sightlines and Pastoral Monuments. These exquisite photographs were exhibited here at the gallery in September–October, 2012. If you missed that exhibition, the artworks are available to view by appointment and we highly recommend making an acquisition.

Sightlines, Untitled 4 (2011) Edition: 3+1AP

Pastoral Monument 6, Daucus Carota (2012) Edition: 3+2AP's

View the Pastoral Monuments

View the Sightlines

SEE IT • LOVE IT • BUY IT

Helen Sear's Sightlines

Sightlines is an extraordinary series, consisting of 21 small-scale photographs that confound our expectations. 

Sightlines ©2011 Helen Sear

Each photograph depicts the portrait of a woman, whose face is obscured by a mass-produced, but hand-painted figurine of a bird. Through obscuring the face of the woman in each image, Sear interrupts the gaze of both sitter and observer.

Sightlines, Untitled 21 ©2011 Helen Sear

The final photograph is applied with an application of several layers of white acrylic gesso, which calls to our attention the physical space of the photograph. Helen Sear presents a sophisticated use of the photograph as object, illustrating a highly developed understanding and treatment of how we look at and engage with art.

 Sightlines, Untitled 21 (DETAIL) ©2011 Helen Sear

Sightlines was completed in 2011, making their debut at the London Art Fair in January 2012. With Edition 1 already sold as a complete set and Edition 3 also being offered only as a set, the 2nd edition effectively becomes the only opportunity to acquire these artworks as individual pieces. Additionally, with the application of acrylic gesso, each of the Sightlines photographs are unique - albeit in a variant of three. 

This is an excellent opportunity to acquire artwork, by an artist who is recognized as one of the UK's most important contemporary artists working today.

Edition: 3 + 1 AP (AP nfs)
Size: 7.25" x 7.25"
Medium: Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag & Acrylic Gesso
Year: 2011

 

SEE IT • LOVE IT • BUY IT

Helen Sear's Pastoral Monuments

Each of my working days is spent surrounded by impeccably made, conceptually strong and visually rich fine art photographs. As I write, I have in my view the Pastoral Monuments series by Helen Sear.

Pastoral Monument 11,  Fumaria Bastardii ©Helen Sear

These compelling photographs are Helen Sear's most recent body of work. Her process of making is long and complex. They are straight photographs, but she has handled them and evidence of that handling is integral in the final art object—a photograph of a photograph.

 Pastoral Monument 1,  Myosotis Arvensis ©Helen Sear

The remarkable aspect of this work visually, is Sear's success in maintaining a sense of volume within the flat surface of the photograph. The suggestion of texture across the smooth surface of the image, also transforms the photographed space and subjects onto—or into—one visual plane. In some of the photographs, the solid vessel containing the flowers, appears transparent. Many visitors to the gallery have commented on them being like a  trompe l'eoil.

Pastoral Monument 1,  Myosotis Arvensis (DETAIL) ©Helen Sear

Inspired by the photographs of Mary Dillwyn—a 19th Century Botanist and Photographer—Sear brings the practice of photographing flowers, within a still life context, right up-to-date. The flowers are not the well bred, manicured specimens we would normally see. They represent a carefully selected few, from more than eighty varieties of wild flower, growing in a single field in Wales—frequented daily by the artist.

These normally ignored flowers are elevated to a position of beauty and admiration. Sear causes us to look at and study them. She skillfully turns our attention to the photographic object itself, creating a space of scrutiny that stops us in our track and forces us to 'not take the photograph for granted'. She does all of this through an accomplished body of work that continues her career-long pre-occupation with the materiality of the object and the cognitive and physical experience of perception.

In my mind, this is work by an established artist of great merit. The pricing on Pastoral Monuments is very conservative and a reflection of the current economy.  Thus making their purchase, at this time, a very good deal indeed!

The Pastoral Monuments series is available as follows:

Edition: 3 + 2 AP's (AP1 nfs)
Size: 27.5" x 27.5"
Medium: Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag
Year: 2012

DUMBO Arts Festival 2012

Dates: 28—30 September

We are delighted to support the annual Dumbo Arts Festival again this year—a vibrant 3 day celebration of art, music and performance. Last year's festival attracted in the region of 220,000 visitors to the neighborhood. We'll be observing the festival hours throughout the weekend: 

Friday: 6pm-9pm

Saturday: 12pm-9pm

Sunday: 12pm-6pm

AT&T AUDIENCE AWARD

The public is invited to vote for their favorite exhibition at the festival. Voting is via the festival's mobile app, which is free to download and easy to use. You can also vote by texting the project name Sightlines and Pastoral Monuments to 917 545 5934. Please VOTE for our exhibition!

HELEN SEAR In Her Own Words

In 2010 our gallery artist, Helen Sear, was awarded the prestigious Major Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales. It's given to artists living and working in Wales, who have demonstrated excellence in their artistic practice.

The award is designed to enable the recipients to dedicate a sustained period of time to their artistic practice, and requires the development of new work. 

The video below is the interview undertaken for the award, where Helen Sear talks about her practice as a whole, and more specifically the key elements that inform the conceptual framework of her artworks. She also provides some insight into the inspirations behind Pastoral Monuments, currently showing at the gallery.

HELEN SEAR: Monograph

A significant retrospective monograph—charting Sear's 30 year career—was published by Ffotogallery (Wales) in February 2012. Signed copies of, Helen Sear Inside The View, are now in stock at the gallery. The monograph includes Sear's key series of artworks and an excellent essay by writer/critic, David Chandler. Beautifully designed, the book is printed in a small edition of 800, with signed copies available for $50 USD.

HELEN SEAR: Sightlines

We're very pleased to be kicking off the new season with a fantastic exhibition of new work by Helen Sear. Two bodies of work are being shown.  

Sightlines, completed in 2011, are small-scale artworks—pigment prints with acrylic gesso—that confound our expectations in the most delightful way. As a viewer of the work, the relationship with each photograph is intimate, yet active. Showing in the rear gallery space, the linear presentation clearly demonstrates the reiteration of color and form, figure and ground, the visible and the unseen—all themes that recur across the artist's practice.

Sightlines, Untitled 16 ©Helen Sear 2011

Pastoral Monuments, showing in the front gallery space, is a wonderful reference to the historical photographs of the botanist and photographer, Mary Dillwyn. Sear brings the arrangement and photographing of flowers in domestic crockery, right up-to-date within her own conceptual framework.

Pastoral Monument 6, Daucus Carota ©Helen Sear 2012