The Change
The title refers to both the English slang word for the menopause and a moment of transformation. The Change continues Sear’s exploration of the human body, landscape and fragile relationships between hormonal changes, climate and terrain. Images of flora and fauna from the Morteratsch glacier in the lower Alps are used to explore both tension and transformation in the landscape. Sear relates this directly with a territory that might be identified with the feminine of the menopausal body, where the flow of the menstrual cycle has come to an end. Central to the video are images of water, as rain, blood, snow, ice, rivers and lakes and their symbolism of both loss and renewal.  In our current time of accelerating climate change, landscape is now undeniably a construction of our own actions, and therefore no longer a territory to be experienced from afar, or as other than our bodies/ourselves. (Editing by Viv)

Helen Sear
Helen Sear’s photographic practice has developed from a Fine Art background of performance, film and installation work made in the 1980’s. Her photographs became widely known in the 1991 British Council exhibition, De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain, which toured Latin America and Eastern Europe. Born in England in 1955 Sear continues to explore ideas of vision, touch, and the re-presentation of the nature of experience, combining drawing, lens based media and digital technologies.  In 1993 she received an Abbey Award at the British School at Rome.  Recent exhibitions include Grounded an Impressions Gallery touring show, Inside the View (part one) in Tarbes France and Spot at the Yard Gallery Nottingham. Her work was included in the exhibition About Face at the Hayward Gallery in summer 2004. A 90-page book, Twice was published by Zelda Cheatle Press in 2002 and Sear was one of the selected artists for Britain in Photo Espagna in 2003. In October 2005 her work formed part of the exhibition La Mirada Reflexiva at the Espai D’Art Contemporani in Castellon Spain. Recent exhibitions include Jyvaskyla Finland and Cuenca Spain, both in October 2006.  Helen Sear will be one of the artists presenting a new work in Locws3 in Swansea 2007 and is featured in the new Thames and Hudson book 'Face: The New Photographic Portrait'.