Seb Trend: XTRALIFE
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art
Saturday 9th March - Sunday 9th June 2024
Central to XTRALIFE is a series of ‘melted photographs’ in artist made frames produced specifically for the exhibition. This marks the first time the photographs have been exhibited together as a solo show and builds on Trend’s ongoing investigations into states of ‘in-between’: molten and solid, representation and abstraction, permanence and momentary.
Through a painting process akin to alchemy Trend liquifies and manipulates images, moving photographic emulsion around like paint. The ‘melted photographs’ are produced by meticulously applying paints and chemicals to the surface changing both the physical make up and narrative reading of the photographs. What was once a photograph is now a painting. Parts of the photograph are held, liquidated, painted, drawn over and embellished to produce new forms in response to the original composition of the image. Patterns in the work reference a sense of structure or break down in structure, against the fluid, amorphous nature of the melted image.
The ground material of the ‘melted photographs’ is KODAK XTRALIFE paper. The exhibition’s title references this promise of longevity, that what is captured within a photograph outlives the fleeting moment it depicts, and everything contained within the photograph lives an XTRALIFE.
Seb Trend was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1986 and graduated from Northumbria University, Newcastle in 2008. Trend is based in Gateshead, UK. Previous exhibitions include: Fake Paintings (w/ Jane Millican), 36 Lime St, Newcastle (2021); Liquid Mud Paintings (solo), Slugtown, Newcastle (2018); Painting in the Dark (solo), 36 Lime St, Newcastle (2016); and RIFF/T (group), Baltic 39, Newcastle (2013).
Photos: Colin Davison