Helen Sear

Helen Sear (born 1955) is a British mixed media artist specialising in photography and moving image.

Early life
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.

Career
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.

Sear received an Abbey Award in 1993 at the British School in Rome. She won joint first prize for visual art at the National Eisteddfod in Wales in 2011, and was the recipient of an Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales Award to develop new work. Ffotogallery, Wales' national agency for photography published her first major monograph in 2012, Inside the View, which was nominated for best international photography book at PHotoEspaña. In 2013, she was awarded the Wakelin Award for her work Chameleon, which became a part of the contemporary art collection at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and museum. In 2015, Sear made a solo presentation for Wales at the 56th Venice Biennale 2015.

She has been described as a formalist feminist and counts Max Ernst as an inspiration, noting the paganism of Samuel Palmer, William Blake, and Paul Nash, but also quoting the Pre-Raphaelites.

Sear was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in March 2024.

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

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

Helen Sear: New Work, Klompching Gallery, New York, US 2017

Group exhibitions

 * 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

Publications

 * Natural’s Not in It John Slyce Portfolio no. 35 (2002)
 * Face. The New Photographic Portrait. Thames and Hudson (2006)
 * Inside the View (2012)
 * Brisées (2013)