'Vee Speers: Immortal' On Exhibition at Jackson Fine Arts in Atlanta

Written by Stanislav Dubrovski Monday, 19 September 2011 22:34

Atlanta, GA - Jackson Fine Arts in Atlanta, Georgia will be showing 'Vee Speers: Immortal" from April 15th until June 18th 2011, an exhibition of new works by Vee Speers. Vee Speers presents the viewer with a distinctly fascinating and highly personal body of work intent on exploring the friction between temporality and timelessness. Vee Speers earned international acclaim with her series The Birthday Party, a collection of portraits informed by the artist's observation of her daughter's eighth birthday. The children portrayed in these photographs were garbed in party dresses and animal masks, blowing facesized bubbles; or dressed in nurse uniforms and gas masks, their expressions steadily transfixing viewers from within timeless compositions awash in anachronistic elements. The Birthday Party found Speers and her subjects gracefully straddling the delicate divides between childhood and old age, past and present, solemnity and play.

It is a theme she picks up in her latest series, 'Immortal'. In 'Immortal', the guests of The Birthday Party have grown up, shedding the material escapism of the masquerade for a more interior, emotionally charged version of fantasy. As Speers tells us, "The escape of adolescents into fantasy is just as important as in childhood, only as young adults the escape is quite often into the virtual world of film, television and internet. So the imagery I have created is an isolated world unique to them, somewhere between fantasy and reality. I want them to be alone, standing like fallen angels, but still part of a common world." The landscapes surrounding Speers's subjects (shot in her native Queensland, Australia) possess an ethereal, boundless quality that reminds us by contrast of the inevitable transience of time.  Speers has self-consciously sought to evoke comparisons to the history of classical painting, at once reinvigorating both the vivid, spiritual Romanticism of Thomas Church's landscapes and the frank self-reflection of Renaissance portraiture. The apparent purity of her ruminative young subjects is underscored at times by brush fires and towers of smoke so dramatic they could be clouds. For Speers, this striking contrast of the cataclysmic and the pristine invites viewers to "indulge the myth of eternal youth," arguably an impetus for artistic production from Dorian Gray onward.

Vee Speers was born in Australia and has been living and working in Paris since 1990. Her work appears in a number of distinguished public and private collections, including CB Collection, Tokyo; the Elton John Collection, UK; and the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. Two monographs, of her internationally acclaimed exhibitions The Birthday Party and Bordello, have been published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, UK and EARbooks, GE, respectively.  Ms. Speers has shown work in a number of solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Vee Speers’ recent solo exhibitions were at Galerie Acte2, Paris, Jackson Fine Art and Singapore International Photography Festival. She is represented by Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta; Galarie Beckers, Frankfurt; and Acte2galerie, Paris. Her 'Birthday Party' photographs will be shwon at the Nordic Light International festival of Photography in May 2011. Visit the artists website at ... www.veespeers.com

In 1990, Jane Jackson opened Jackson Fine Art, a gallery in Atlanta specializing in 20th century and contemporary photography.  Jackson Fine Art quickly became an important voice in the south as well as the international market.  In March of 2003, Jane Jackson sold the gallery to her director of six years Anna Walker Skillman. Ms. Jackson went on to become the director of the prestigious Sir Elton John Photography Collection. Jackson Fine Art continues to have a strong focus on contemporary work while maintaining a blend of 20th century and vintage works. Jackson Fine Art participates and has participated in various international art fairs including, The Photography Show (AIPAD) in New York and Miami; Paris Photo; Art Chicago: The Navy Pier Show;  and Photo Los Angeles. The client list of Jackson Fine Art, includes public institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The High Museum of Art; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; Maison Europeenne de la Photgraphie. and The Art Institute of Chicago.  Jackson Fine Art has worked with many corporate collections including: Saks Fifth Avenue; Delta Airlines; Oppenheimer & Company; Citibank; Sovereign; Teutloff Photo + Video Collection; Wieland Homes; Target; Coca Cola Company and Banana Republic. Visit Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta at : www.jacksonfineart.com/

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