Lindsay Seers has been commissioned to produce a new VR artwork – Care(less) – that will tour the UK in 2019/20 and which will address current public debates surrounding care. Care(less) will be exhibited for the first time at Fabrica, Brighton.
It has to be this way, installation view all images courtesy Lindsey Seers and Matts Gallery
Care(less) is a new 360-degree film work by artist Lindsay Seers. In this, Seers’ first work using virtual reality technology, visitors can experience what it might feel like to be in the body of an older person facing a gradual reduction in capacity. The film lasts six minutes and visitors may experience it using a VR headset and enter via a medical waiting room within Fabrica’s gallery walls.
We all begin ageing from the minute we are born. The artwork and its accompanying texts and programme
of talks, film screenings and activities investigate prevalent attitudes to ageing, the nature of relationship centred on care and how care is currently administered through the care system in England.
In the UK and across most of Europe, people are living longer and older people increasingly make up a
greater proportion of our population. So, ageing is inevitable and predominant. Despite this ageism is the
most commonly experienced form of prejudice and discrimination.
“For Fabrica, this commission builds upon a series of three previous artist commissions that sought to undermine death as a taboo subject. Lindsay Seers’ new work engages with the fear of ageing, and
prejudice against the natural order of entropy, that our culture engenders”
– says Liz Whitehead, Director, Fabrica.
The OPCARE Commissioning Partnership comprises research teams from the University of Brighton (Lead Researcher), University of Lincoln and University of Birmingham and arts organisations Fabrica, Ikon Gallery and Frequency Festival. Funded by Wellcome Trust (Research Enrichment), the OPCARE Artist Commission responds to new research that looks as the experiences of older people receiving care which they pay for themselves. In exploring this complex area Care(less) and an accompanying programme of talks, discussions and activities seek to explore the value and meaning of care in human relationships. The commission provides the opportunity for an artist to work directly with the university research teams to expand the public conversation about care and open up a space to explore the universal human dilemmas that we may all face but do not want to think about until they happen.
Lindsay Seers, (Care) less, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Fabrica.
Lindsay Seers – Care(less) Preview date: 4 October 2019 05 – 24 November Fabrica, 40 Duke Street, Brighton, BN1 1AG fabrica.org.uk
About The Artist
Lindsay Seers works in London and lives on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (BA Hons, Sculpture and Media 1991-94) and at Goldsmiths College, University of London (MA Fine Art 1999-2001), where she now works as a lecturer on MA Fine Art (0.2). Her works are in a number of collections including Tate collection, Arts Council collection, Artangel collection and the collection of MONA, Tasmania. She has won several prestigious grants and awards such as the Sharjah Art Foundation Production Award, UAE; Le Jeu de Paume production award for the Toulouse Festival, France; the Paul Hamlyn Award; the Derek Jarman Award; AHRC Award; a number of Arts Council and British Council Awards in support of her works and she also received the Wingate Scholarship from The British School at Rome 2007/8. She has shown her large scale works internationally at a number of museums and art centres including SMK (National Gallery of Denmark); Venice Biennale 2015; Hayward Gallery, UK; MONA, Tasmania; Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden; Smart Project Space, Amsterdam; Kiasma, Finland; Turner Contemporary, UK; Tate Triennial, UK, TPW, Canada, Sami Centre for Art; Norway; Centre for Contemporary Art ‘Poland and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. lindsayseers.info
