Victor Lim Seaward
Meredith Sellers
Workplace | 50 Mortimer Street, London, W1W 7RP
Opening reception: Thursday 7 September, 6:30 - 9pm
Exhibition opening hours: Tue - Sat, 10 - 6pm
Workplace is pleased to present The Future Leaks Out, a two person exhibition featuring new and recent work by London based artist Victor Lim Seaward and Philadelphia based artist Meredith Sellers. The exhibition’s title is drawn from William S. Burroughs’ aphoristic quote about his developments of the Dadaist Cut-up technique: ‘When you cut into the present the future leaks out’. The works in the exhibition utilise isolation, mediation and combinations of images and objects to offer a metaphorical incision into the present moment and evince underlying anxieties of the future.
The Future Leaks Out brings together Seller’s critical examination of image-making in a post-digital age and Seaward’s ongoing exploration of the possibilities associated with ceaseless technological advancement. Their works collectively draw attention to ever- evolving contemporary social and cultural discourses. They presciently hint at the profound anxiety stemming from the continuously expanding realm of technology and, echoing Burroughs prophetic declaration, its potential to destabilise and topple closely guarded historical and cultural foundations.
Victor Lim Seaward delves into a rich legacy of object history. The works in this exhibition emphasise his series of ‘objets d’art’, wherein Seaward combines high-tech industrial processes, historically significant imagery, and precious metals to re-examine art historical tropes. By meticulously arranging artefacts and museological objects, reconfigured in varying relationship and scale to each other, Seaward’s works overturn entranched colonial heirarchies to explore themes of commodity, production, and agency, generating a charged connection between the past and present that points towards an uncertain future.
Meredith Sellers’ paintings fuse the traditional concept of paintings as pictorial windows with the boundless possibilities of the digital screen. By appropriating images from a diverse range of sources - including digital advertisements, stock photography, art history and news outlets - Sellers confronts the underlying systems of power, wealth, and violence that shape our contemporary experience. Through the juxtaposition of halting and visceral portrayals of destruction, such as car crashes, alongside subtler indicators of catastrophe like dripping taps and melting ice-shelves, Sellers’ works present a compelling meditation on the prevailing macroeconomic, ecological and political forces that shape us.