Helen Sear

She studied Fine Art at Reading University and University College London, Slade School, her practice coming to prominence in the late 1980s, when she worked primarily with mixed-media installation, performance and video.

Her photographic works became widely known in the 1991 British Council exhibition, De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain, which toured extensively in Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Photography remains a central subject and medium in her work, which often challenges the dominance of the eye and the fixed-point perspective associated with the camera lens, and explores the potential of the artwork to activate and elicit feeling.

Sear was the first woman to represent Wales with a solo exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale 2015 presenting a suite of new worksrest is smoke. Her most ambitious video work to date, wahaha biota has been shown in the UK, Netherlands and Switzerland in 2018 /2019. Her inaugural exhibition with Martin Asbaek Gallery, Fascination, opened in Copenhagen in March 2018 and in 2019 two major pieces were acquired by the James Hyman British Photography Collection.

She was recently voted one of the key100 women photographers practicing globally by The Royal Photographic Society: Hundred Heroines.

She was visiting professor at the Royal Academy Schools London between 2014 and 2019 and is currently external examiner for Graduate Media at the Slade School UCL.