Re-merging from the chapel, I realise that Seers has dramatised her multi-layered journey to haunt her audience like a macabre, unforgettable dream. — Richard Cork, The Financial Times, 21 October 2012
Lindsay Seers' ambititious installation Nowhere Less Now weaves together personal and fictional narratives to consider how history is created and truth perceived. Drawing connections between the 19th century Tin Tabernable chapel in Kilburn, the birth of her great great uncle, George Edwards, the birth of Mina Bergson, artist and sister of French philosopher Henri Bergson, and her own birth exactly 100 years later to the day, Seers explores image-making mediums, sea-faring and migration. One event leads to another in a world where coincidence takes on the character of necessity. The discovery by Seers of a family photograph of great great uncle Edwards, taken whilst serving with the British navy in Zanzibar, took her in his wake to the islands off Africa’s east coast. Many things came to the surface in this archipelago, considered to be the seat of witchcraft in East Africa; from an Arab princess and a young English sailor drifting in the currents of Empire, to an inscription on a centuries old Baobab tree. Combining photography, performance, video and animation, Nowhere Less Now is symptomatic of Seers’ relentless search for truths that remain elusive as they slip through the lens.
Image: Installation view of Lindsay Seers, Nowhere Less Now in the 'Mirrorcity' exhibition at Hayward Gallery, London, 2014. Photograph: Courtesy Hayward Gallery.
at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
Swansea, 15 October 2016 - 19 March 2017
Nowhere Less Now 7 was presented in the atrium of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. In the seventh chapter of the work, Seers addresses the collector, philanthropist and founder of the gallery Glynn Vivian. Swansea's maritime past and the gallery's history are interwoven into the piece via reflections on Vivian's travels and the objects that he collected.
Image: Lindsay Seers, Nowhere Less Now, 2012 presented at the Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea in 2016. Photo by Lindsay Seers
at Turner Contemporary
Margate, 21 May - 25 September 2016
The fifth chapter of the episodic work was part of 'Seeing Round Corners' at Turner Contemporary, a group exhibition exploring the ways in which artists have gravitated to the universal form of the circle, with over 100 works from 3000BC to the present day by major international artists including Christian Marclay, Rebecca Horn and Theaster Gates.
Image: Lindsay Seers, Nowhere Less Now 5, 2015 as shown during Seeing Round Corners, Turner Contemporary, 2016. Photograph: Lindsay Seers
at Hayward Gallery
London, 14 October - 4 January 2015
Lindsay Seer's 'Nowhere Less Now' is a video that blends her seafaring heritage with the narrative of a fictional seaman. Screened inside the hull of an enormous upturned replica ship, it sets the tone for an experiential, sometimes disorientating journey through a land of make-believe. — Friere Barnes, Time Out, 28 October 2014
Nowhere Less Now was substanitally reconfigured and included in the Hayward Gallery's group exhibition 'Mirrorcity'. The exhibition drew togther recent work and new commissions by key emerging and established artists working in London, whose work addresses the challenges, conditions and consequences of living in a time where digital and physical spaces fold into each other.
Image: Installation view of Lindsay Seers, Nowhere Less Now, 2012 in the 'Mirrorcity' exhibition at Hayward Gallery, London, 2014. Photograph: Courtesy Hayward Gallery.