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A Hiding Place in Waking Dreams presents a selection of photographs and moving image works of Helen Sear in her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands.

From a fine art background in performance, film and installation work in the 1980s she continues to explore digital technologies and lens-based media, combining drawings and sound.

Technology, landscape and the human and animal body have played an important part in her work. She focuses on our changing relationship with our environment. She has also been very influenced by literature (magic realism), cinema, painting and early photographic techniques.

Series on show at the exhibition, amongst others: Becoming Forest, Diviner, Sightlines, Viewfinder, Pastoral Monuments, the video Wahaha Biota and Cold Frame.

Cold Frame (2019)
This work was made specifically for Pennings Foundation and will be exhibited for the first time. Cold Frame consists of 66 panels of plexiglass, onto which the image of a small cold frame (greenhouse) for protecting young plants is printed. Enlarged to the size of a greenhouse, each panel makes reference to both the panes of glass in an actual greenhouse and early photographic camera plates. The zucchini plant growing inside takes on a human scale, simultaneously humorous and poignant.

Helen Sear (1955) studied Fine Art at Reading University and University College London, Slade School. Her photographic works became widely known in the 1991 exhibition 'De-Composition: Constructed Photography' in Britain, which toured Latin America and Eastern Europe. She had a solo exhibition at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Helen is a visiting Professor at the Royal Academy Schools London and lives and works in France and the UK.