Lindsay Seers

I can’t tell you | Grundy Gallery, Blackpool

6 May - 10 June 2006

Grundy Gallery, Blackpool

Materials: Ventriloquist's dummy with two heads, two cameras and electronics; 2 monitor works on DVD with headphones; DVD projection with stereo sound, book and shelf, mouth photograph in perspex case.

The exhibition featured a newly commissioned DVD work for Grundy, entitled Under the Influence of Magicians, which specifically draws on the ventriloquist phase of Seers work. The film plots the relationship between the artist's Aunty Barbara and Cyril Critchlow. Peter Seers (Barbara's brother and Lindsay's father) met Cyril ( a Blackpool magician) during his work as an entertainer in the Royal Navy. Barbara Seers worked as a ventriloquist in Blackpool in Cyril's theatre. The work features Blackpool's Grand Theatre and a 'Midget Town' which was at the height of its popularity in the 30's.

Also included in the exhibition is a ventriloquist's dummy with two heads modified from Barbara's original dummy from her performances in the 50's. The dummy has been re-constructed to take photographs from cameras in his articulated mouths. This anthropomorphic camera seems to provide a platform for the viewer to perform with the dummy – their exchanges were printed and included in a later publication. (The altered dummy was commissioned initially by the Gallery of Photography in Dublin).

Seers' work as a whole draws on photographic theory, recent ideas about consciousness/memory, philosophy and literature to create Brechtian influenced stories.