Seawright is a photographer who has drawn heavily on his Northern Irish background to produce searching photographic investigations of aspects of its fraught political terrain, as in his 'Orange Order' and 'Police Force' series from the early 1990s. In his recent work, Seawright has moved away from an overtly Irish context, focusing on what he has termed a 'generic malevolent landscape' represented by the uninhabited spaces at the edge of cities and forests throughout Europe. These images take the viewer from bright, bleached vacant lots to corners of almost complete darkness, lit only by the dim, ambient light of street lamps, where the city merges with the forest.
Read MoreSolo exhibitions include: American Trilogy, Museum of Fine Arts, Shenyang, China, (2018); Things Left Unsaid, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, (2014), travelling to The Model, Sligo and The Ulster Museum, (both 2015); Field Notes, National Media Museum, Bradford, (2007); Invisible Cities, first shown at Kerlin Gallery in 2005, and travelling to Naughton Gallery, Queens University, Belfast, (2006), Ffotogallery, Cardiff, (2007) and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, (2008); the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Imperial War Museum, London, (both 2003); the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, (2001); The Photographer’s Gallery, London, (1995, 1991). Group exhibitions and biennials include: Whitechapel Gallery, London, (2010); the 50th Venice Biennale, in which Seawright represented Wales, (2003); the British Art Show 5, (2000); How We Are, Tate Britain, London, (2007); Sightings - New Photographic Art, the ICA, London, (1998) and Different Stories, the Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam, (1994).
Text courtesy Kerlin Gallery.
