Given the current interest in secret surveillance activities, this exhibition is timely. Both Seamus Harahan and Christopher Stewart deal with the subject from different standpoints.

Seamus Harahan's films are studies of human behaviour. Harahan sets up his camera and often uses a long, single take, as if from CCTV, focusing on a particular human activity being performed at a distance. The activity remains inexplicable: two young men making semaphore signals across a river, in Blue Eyes; while in Cold Open, a group of teenage children scuffling and idling in the middle of a busy road. Harahan scrutinizes the activity, occasionally zooming back as though to provide further clues, to locate and context the behaviour. As the artist puts it, he 'maps emotional and intellectual spaces.'

In the new work at Gimpel Fils, Torch (extended), we observe a figure lurking among bushes in a road of terraced houses. The long-range viewpoint moves back and forth, keeping the man's balding head in view. He is a university bookbinder tending his premises frontage and continuing to trim the hedge of his student neighbour's garden, although his suit and tie do not lend themselves to this. Harahan mediates this seemingly strange act of urban vanity and altruism, soundtracked by Marc Almond and Cindy Ecstasy singing of the tentative signs of new love, displacing again any simple, single narrative.

Christopher Stewart's photographs, from his Insecurity series, deal with a subject familiar to the artist: personnel from security companies and covert operators. Photographed alone or in small groups, isolated in sombre rural or strange urban settings, it is hard to know whether the protagonists are acting out their tasks, or simply awaiting orders. That the act of preparation in the photographs takes place in the ready made environments of familiar city streets, motels, parking lots and shopping malls, simply adds to the verisimilitude of the mileu he photographs.

Seamus Harahan has held solo exhibitions at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. His videos have been screened in internationally, including Germany, Portugal, Holland, Czech Republic and USA. In the 51st Venice Biennale, his work was selected for showcasing art from Northern Ireland. He held his third solo exhibition, Cold Open, at Gimpel Fils in 2012.

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, Christopher Stewart has taken part in over forty solo and group exhibitions internationally including at the UK’s National Museum of Photography, Film & Television and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Recent group exhibitions include The History of Now, F/STOP Fotografie Festival Leipzig (2012); Something That I’ll Never Really See, a Victoria & Albert Museum Collection touring exhibition at The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (2011); and Darkside II, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2009). His work is featured in The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson World of Art Series, 2004/2009; 100 European Photographers, EXIT, Madrid, 2013 (forthcoming); The Critical Dictionary, Black Dog, London, 2011; and Michael Langford’s Basic Photography, Focal Press 2009. He has work held in public and private collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum’s permanent collection in London. He held his fourth solo exhibition, Super Border, at the gallery in 2009.

Gimpel Fils Gallery
30 Davies Street
London W1K 4NB United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 74932488
info@gimpelfils.com
www.gimpelfils.com

Opening hours
Monday - Friday from 10.00am to 5.30pm
Saturday from 11.00am to 4.00pm