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Dallas Seitz unapologetically utilizes the poetry of objects to combine his interest in collecting, museumology, colonization, personal historyand the falsity of representation. The often-absurd works expose an awareness of the thinking process while recalling museum collections and relationships or narratives created by display. Seitz points us in various directions with a non-intentionality. Surreal practises such as wrapping exotic trees for protection from the cold, to voodoo, to the belief in fantasy creatures, distorting history in museum collections, using sea sponges to protect artworks in the basement of the Louvre, and hunting wild beasts with his father in Canada, build a system of branches much like a Darwin's tree.
Dallas Seitz Lives and works in London
Awards
Henry Moore Foundation Grant, 2007
Arts Council England Grant, 2007
Alberta College of Art Alumni Award of Excellence, 2002
Canada Council for the Arts Video Production Grant, 2002
The Alberta Heritage Scholarship, 2000
Department of Foreign Affairs Research Grant, Canada, 1998
The Frank Vervoot Memorial Scholarship, 1995
The Don Ray Memorial Scholarship, 1994
The Gregory Arnold Memorial Award, 1993
Dallas Seitz's video, drawing and sculpture work uses colonization in various forms, as its starting point. From bone cells colonizing muscle cells to the father colonizing the son, up to the political colonizing the personal, the works become questions of positioning. Mental and physical relationships are investigated in the works while underpinned with narratives from literature and film and forms of collecting. In the work For Irma (after Interpretation of Dreams: Freud) objects from the case studies Freud investigated were collected by multiple means. (Constructed, found and contributed from a variety of sources including other artists and family members) Seitz's own Grandmother gave a set of her Dentures bringing new meaning to the object but also its relationship to the text. In the video The Protector Seitz films his Father in a barren winter landscape shooting a coyote and dragging it through the snow as a symbol fatherly protection but also of the "taming the wild beast". Proteus Syndrome uses the story of the Joseph Carey Merrick (the Elephant Man) as a basis for internal colonization. As Seitz conforms his head into that of Joseph's by use of light and shadow, the video alludes to the process of cellular dominance and mental anguish.
Currently: The first solo exhibition in London by Canadian born sculptor and video maker Dallas Seitz.
Working between the mediums of video, sculpture, drawing and photography Seitz has been investigating processes of collecting as a form of colonization. The layers of the work begins at a personal level often using the artist's own family, upbringing, and memories as a starting point and moving on to more psychological and political terrains.
The beginning of this work was derived out of children's stories and Boy Scout handbooks, featuring on how children are reared and in some ways colonized by parents and society. This "taming of the wild beast" seems to feature and reoccur throughout children's stories and consequently the artist's practise. The use of fictional stories and factual events get combined to create new narratives and in a sense the works seem to over take each other and themselves, like objects in a museum display fighting for importance from the overall collection. Historically this mix of fact and fiction took place in the Cabinets of curiosities or Wunderkammers of the 16th and17th century. Explorers would create room-sized collections of their artefacts found and taken from foreign lands. Through prestige and competition these collected items grew ever more exotic to the point of mythical. Creatures began appearing in these collections such as the Scythian Lamb (actually a type of Fern) or Mermaids (a monkey skeleton fused to a fish skeleton). These personal collections were the precursors to Museums of Anthropology or Natural History.
Solo Shows
"Save me" Carter Presents London 2009
Carter Presents, London, 2008
The Pump House Gallery, London, 2007
Dead Cowboys Gibo, London, 2004
Video Spin, The Photographers Gallery project space, London, 2000
Punch, Harcourt House Gallery, London, 1998
Prospectus Fin, Truck Gallery, Calgary, 1998
Time For Pause The Little Gallery, Calgary, 1997
Punish, Stride Gallery, Calgary, 1997
Jack Pack, The New Gallery, Calgary, 1997
Group Shows
"The Social lives of Objects" Dallas Seitz, Lisa Penny, Hilary Jack,
Castlefield Gallery Manchester May - July 2009
"Laboratory Polymorphic" Tou Scene Stavangar Norway 2009
V22 Sculpture show London 2009
The Wharf Road project London2008
Yee Haw, Vegas Gallery London, 2007
Mining, Gallery West Germany, Berlin, 2006
Everybody Comes to HollyRood, Attic Salt, Edinburgh, 2006
Black Implication Flooding, Colony, Birmingham, 2006
Family Viewing, Curators Space, London, 2006
Pencil, Carter Presents, London, 2006
How Did I Get Here, Events Network, London, 2005
London Movies, Cinema Bozar, Belgium, 2005
Off Loop, Barcelona Spain, 2005
Stratagies Against Marketecture, Temporary Contemporary, London, 2004
The Sneeze 80X80, Gallery Gason Rouge, Athens, 2004
Royal Road to the Unconscious, Freud Museum, London, 2004
Cinderella, Trailor, London, 2004
Motor City, 27 Spital Square, London, 2004
Godzilla, Trailor, London, 2003
Spaceman MOT, Gallery, London, 2003
Us And Them, The Great Eastern Hotel, London, 2002
Heart of Glass, The Mirror Gallery, London, 2001
TIPPI HEDRON VTO, Gallery, London, 2001
Magazine Show, Centre of Attention, London, 2000
EX. 120, The New Gallery, Calgary, 2000
Recursion Flipside Gallery, New York, 1998
Emerging Artist Showcase, Gallery 101, Ottawa, 1998
Published Writings
Victim, Clare Hooper Project, London, 2005
Pilot 2 at St.Johns Street, London, 2005
Pilot 1 Projects at LimeHouse Studios, London, 2004
Intergalactic Automatic Catalogue Essay on the work of Herald Hvingleby, 2002
BEHIND THE ROSE HEDGE article on the work of Laura Vickerson, Inversion, Spring Issue, 1997
Education
October 2000 – August 2001
Master of Arts, Combined Media Chelsea College of Art and Design, London UK
September – December 1997
Artist in Residence, Apocalypso Residency The Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff Canada
September 1992 – May 1996
Diploma, Department of Sculpture The Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary Alberta
Canada
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