PAUL SEAWRIGHT - OUBLIER

Paul Seawright was born in 1965 in Belfast - Northern Ireland.

Paul Seawright has interpreted the limit and boundary theme by taking photographs of those zones in public areas normally hidden from people's view, which, however, are strongly characterising.

The following places were examined: the storage facilities of the Panizzi Library, the Civic Museums, the Parmiggiani Arcade, the San Giorgio Church and abandoned buildings.

This is what Paul Seawright has to tell us about his project for Storie urbane (Urban Stories), entitled Oublier:

"The Limit and Boundary theme attracted me very much since it concerns an aspect that I have been dedicating attention to for quite some time now. I have had the opportunity to work in many and various European towns and cities over the years, in particular, taking into consideration, the outskirts, in other words, that part of the town/city that is uninhabited; it is a kind of non-place that is situated between the countryside and the town/city. In addition, I have done a lot of work in Belfast, my hometown, concentrating on the limits of the territory and on the debris in a context obviously with strong political overtones.

Reggio Emilia is a very attractive town, with large and imposing buildings, particularly historical buildings, which characterise the centre. In many other cities, in particular, in London, the large historical buildings are not accessible to the general public. So, I started to think that I would have taken photographs that explore the boundaries and the limits between public and private space, since, obviously not all the spaces are accessible in public buildings; public buildings also have private areas, and my starting point was precisely this aspect. I also started to take photographs in the Lord Mayor's office, in the Town Hall, in the rooms of the Panizzi Library, inside banks, in an abandoned monastery. There were hidden and interesting and attractive spaces in a number of these places, but not equally interesting from a conceptual point of view. I needed to find a new level of research, another boundary to explore within the project, so I took a number of photographs of the library's ceiling, a place where virtually no one goes and that is completely dark. I took a number of photographs in this space using long exposure times and I started to assess the idea, the assumption that another limit existed, another boundary: those determined by human vision and overcome by photographic technology.

This was the path I followed to approach the project on the town of Reggio Emilia and it was developed. I have to say that the formal study of the photographs was accompanied by my desire to explore the spaces also in a conceptual form; in fact, to understand if and how these spaces could represent other boundaries. In the past I was interested in the phenomenology of the uninhabited place and of how it could be interpreted metaphorically to give the place a meaning.

So I wanted I verify whether the unlit, urban spaces could represent symbolically what has become a place to forget, the negation of memory. Obviously, this also refers to a space, from a literal point of view, where things are placed, like warehouses, attics, storage areas, and then forgotten, a place where things are placed and no longer thought of. We also cancel things in our mind, things we don't want to address and which we don't want to consciously think about.

Another fundamental aspect of my work is the investigation on absence. Photography concentrates on the presence, on icons that describe things and I like the slight paradox represented by the fact that when we physically enter these spaces, there is nothing visible there. These are fundamentally dark spaces to the naked eye, but the photographic process, the slow exposure, transforms the situation completely. It is a kind of "miraculous" transformation; a photograph taken with a long exposure time can make the dark place become completely illuminated and reveal everything".

Official web site: www.paulseawright.com.

A number of solo exhibitions

• Hidden, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2004
• Hidden, Imperial War Museum, London, England 2003
• Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, 2003
• Milton Keynes Gallery, Buckinghamshire, UK, 2003
• Foundation Marangoni, Florence, 2002
• Inside Out, Napoli, 2002
• Galerie du Jour, Agnes b, Paris, France, 2001
• Hasselblad Centre, Kunst Museum, Gothenberg, Sweden, 2001
• Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, 2001
• Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2000
• Centre of Photography, University of Salamanca, Spain (catalogue), 2000
• Maureen Paley/Interim Art, London, England, 2000
• Bonakdar Jancou Gallery, New York, NY, 2000
• Photo.doc, Forum Box, Helsinki, Finland, 2000

A number of collective exhibitions

• Further, Representing Wales at the 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2003
• Installation - Disaster Area, The Glasshouse, Amsterdam, 2003
• Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Spain, 2003
• The Unblinking Eye, Irish Museum, Dublin, Ireland, 2002
• GewaltBilder, Gewalt in der Gegewartskunst Museum Bellerive, Zurich, Switzerland, 2002
• The Gap Show, Critical Art from Great Britain, Museum um Ostwall, Dormund, Germany, 2002
• New Directions, Winston Wachter Fine Art, Seattle, Washington, 2001
• A470, Oriel Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno, Wales and Chapter, Cardiff, 2001
• Werner Mantz Prize, Centrum Beeldende Kunst, Maastricht, Netherlands, 2001
• Depicting Abscence/Implying Prescence, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, California, 2001
• 50 Years of Irish Art, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland, 2001
• Auto Werke, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany, 2000
• British Art Show 5, Travelling show. Venues include Scottish National Gallery of Modern, Edinburgh, Scotland, Southampton City Art Gallery, Fotogallery Cardiff, Ikon Birmingham, 2000
• Irish Art Now: From the Poetic to the Political. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2000 Ireland. Venues include: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Boston, MA. 2000
• Exhibition traveled to Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois and other institutions through 2003
• 2000 Lautlose Gegewart, Bielfelder Kunstverein photogallery di Paul Seawright