Helen Sear

Helen Sear was born in Banbury, England, in 1955 and grew up in the West Midlands. Her mother was a teacher and her father a maxillo-facial surgeon and she has two younger brothers. She was introduced to the natural environment through regular family walks, during which her father shared his knowledge of plants and wildlife. This early exposure nurtured her connection with the natural world and shaped her enduring interest in visualizing and interpreting elements of the landscape as bodies inseparable from our own human forms (e.g., Anatomy of a Tree, Royal Academy, 2025). Sear studied Fine Art at Reading University and University College London, and she studied at Slade School. In the late 1980s, she worked primarily through installation, performance, and film. Her photographic works were included in the 1991 British Council exhibition "De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain", which toured Latin America and Eastern Europe. She was awarded a PhD by publication in 2009 at the University of Wales Newport titled Reconstructing Experience. Sear was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in March 2024.

Sear's work first came to prominence internationally through her participation in the British Council's 1991 touring exhibition De-Composition: Constructed Photography in Britain, which toured Eastern Europe and Latin America until 1998. Her practice, rooted in Magic Realism, Surrealism, and Conceptual Art, frequently explores themes of vision, touch and relationships between figure and landscape. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, with notable solo shows in Copenhagen at Martin Asbæk Gallery, New York (Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn), Stuttgart, Eindhoven, and London at, both at the Anderson O’Day Gallery and Zelda Cheatle Gallery, where she developed a technique of making (non-contact) prints from 2 negatives that disrupted a conventional approach to portraiture, blurring the boundaries of both facial recognition and figure and ground.

In 2015, Helen Sear was selected as the first woman to represent Wales with a solo exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale. Curated by Stuart Cameron and Ffotogallery and commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales, the exhibition, titled …the rest is smoke, was housed at Santa Maria Ausiliatrice in Venice.

Her studio is in Burgundy, France, where she lives. She is married to the Swiss painter Andreas Rüthi.

• Gone to Earth, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, 1994 • Twice... Once, Anderson O’Day London, 1998 • Zelda Cheatle Gallery, 2000 Inside The View, Klompching Gallery, New York, US, 2009 • Beyond The View', Klompching Gallery, New York, US, 2010 • Display, G39 Cardiff, 2009 • Beyond The View, Bildkultur, Stuttgart, 2012 Sightlines and Pastoral Monuments, Klompching Gallery, New York, US 2012 • Lure, Oriel Davies national touring exhibition, 2013 • Pastoral Monuments, Les Rencontres Internationales, Gaspésie Canada, 2014 Helen Sear, Klompchng Gallery, New York, US 2015 Helen Sear: New Work, Klompching Gallery, New York, US 2017

• British Council touring Exhibition De-Composition, constructed photography in Britain. 1991–1998 • Moments of Capture, Museum of Modern Art, Skopje, Macedonia • A Quality of Light, Office of Art project, Tate Gallery, St. Ives, 1997 • Here to Stay, Arts Council of England purchases from the 1990s LaUSnne, Switzerland, 1998 • Je t’envisage, la disparition du portrait: Musée de L’Elysée, • About Face, Hayward Gallery, London, 2004 • La Mirada Reflexiva, Espai D’Art Contemporani de Castellon, Spain, (with Robert Longo and Perejaume), 2005 • Nothing Is In The Place, Kraków (Photo month), 2010 • We Have The Mirrors, We Have The Plans: Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales, 2010 • Paris Photo, Aperture Foundation New York, 2011 • Portmanteau, Halle 14 Leipzig, 2011 • Hijacked 111, Derby Quad, 2012 • New Perspectives: Landscape Art in Wales since the 1970s, National Museum Wales, 2012 • Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, London, 2014