Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea
Until 19 March 2017
Inside the atrium of the Glynn Vivian gallery sits a leviathan. Once you go round the corner and approach the great grey mass, it becomes clear that this is not some beast from the depths but merely an upturned ship, albeit with some strange looking tentacles trapped in its propeller.
Within the body of vessel sits Nowhere Less Now, Lindsay Seers’ video installation, which is currently being exhibited as part of a programme examining journeys at the gallery. It is as black as pitch in there. Fumbling to find a seat in the darkness, the only source of light emerges from two rounded screen – one flat, one convex – two lenses gazing out of the darkness. A stream of images – some real, some faked – are projected onto the screen: Zanzibar, a woman dressed in masonic symbols and the inside of the gallery.
The narrative is a slippery beast: it is neither past nor future, rather a suspended present somewhere between fiction and fact. One narrative tells of the artist’s journey in search after her great, great uncle, another is a dystopia where a blind man who illegally ‘collects imagines’ and seems to commune with this dead relative, reflecting the history of the gallery’s founder. Behind the excess of narrative, the confusion of imagery, seems to be a coherent idea: through memory we construct our truth and find meaning in our lives.
Admission: free. Info: www.swansea.gov.uk/glynnvivian