'Melted images' artwork coming to Sunderland

An emerging Finnish artist has chosen Sunderland to show his fascinating exhibition of "melted photographs".

The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA) in the National Glass Centre has the free exhibition, XTRALIFE, from March 9 to June 9.

It will be the first time Helsinki-born Seb Trend’s photographs will be shown in a solo exhibition.

Seb’s work concerns "in-between" states: "solid and liquid; stillness and movement; micro and macro; representation and abstraction, the photograph and the painting". The results will draw in the viewer.

He graduated from Northumbria University in 2008 and was selected as an emerging artist in the 2009 Newcastle Gateshead Art Fair. In 2011 Seb co-founded artist collective SPECTRUM. He lives in the North East.

For his photographs, Seb uses Kodak XtraLife paper and the exhibition’s title refers to longevity; that what is captured within a photograph outlives the fleeting moment it depicts.

Jon Weston, curator of Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, said: "We are thrilled to be presenting Seb Trend’s manipulated photographs for the first time as a solo exhibition.

"His artwork has been championed in the North East for a while and we look forward to visitors experiencing his work in Sunderland.

“NGCA has a legacy of championing and challenging photography in all its forms and we are excited (alongside the work of Laura Lancaster in the NGCA Main Gallery) to continue pushing the boundaries through the practice of two artists who take photography either as a medium or basis for producing generous and engaging paintings.”

“Through a painting process akin to alchemy Seb 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 'melted photographs’ embody a state of flux, shapeshifting and challenging the fixed nature of the photograph and its reliability as a historical record.”

More information is at www.northerngalleryforcontemporaryart.org.uk.