Press release from Turner Contemporary 

 

 

 

Lindsay Seers’ work operates in a world where everything is connected, and not just by chance. In her new film installation for Turner Contemporary she returns, as she often does, to her family history. Seers explores her fascination with her great-great uncle’s condition Heterochromia, where different coloured eyes result from one twin subsuming the other in the womb. 

Her uncle’s biography has inspired previous works such as Monocular, 2011, and an on-going project in Zanzibar, where he was stationed as a seaman. Coincidentally, Seers’ uncle grew up in the same time and village as the entertainer Vesta Tilley. Tilley adopted male personas throughout her career in the British music hall during the early 20th century, dressing as a dandy or a sailor and singing to the ladies. The characters of Tilley and Hetty King, another important historical male impersonator, sent Seers off on a journey involving a chance meeting with one of the singers who appears in Entangled². The singer left a career in opera to perform as Tilley and King, an experience he narrates in the film.