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Artists: Victor Lim Seaward - Meredith Sellers

Workplace presents The Future Leaks Out, a two person exhibition featuring new and recent work by London based artist Victor Lim Seaward and Philadelphia based artist Meredith Sellers. The exhibition’s title is drawn from William S. Burroughs’ aphoristic quote about his developments of the Dadaist Cut-up technique: ‘When you cut into the present the future leaks out’. The works in the exhibition utilise isolation, mediation and combinations of images and objects to offer a metaphorical incision into the present moment and evince underlying anxieties of the future.

The Future Leaks Out brings together Seller’s critical examination of image-making in a post-digital age and Seaward’s ongoing exploration of the possibilities associated with ceaseless technological advancement. Their works collectively draw attention to ever- evolving contemporary social and cultural discourses. They presciently hint at the profound anxiety stemming from the continuously expanding realm of technology and, echoing Burroughs prophetic declaration, its potential to destabilise and topple closely guarded historical and cultural foundations.

Victor Lim Seaward delves into a rich legacy of object history. The works in this exhibition emphasise his series of ‘objets d’art’, wherein Seaward combines high-tech industrial processes, historically significant imagery, and precious metals to re-examine art historical tropes. By meticulously arranging artefacts and museological objects, reconfigured in varying relationship and scale to each other, Seaward’s works overturn entranched colonial heirarchies to explore themes of commodity, production, and agency, generating a charged connection between the past and present that points towards an uncertain future.

Meredith Sellers’ paintings fuse the traditional concept of paintings as pictorial windows with the boundless possibilities of the digital screen. By appropriating images from a diverse range of sources - including digital advertisements, stock photography, art history and news outlets - Sellers confronts the underlying systems of power, wealth, and violence that shape our contemporary experience. Through the juxtaposition of halting and visceral portrayals of destruction, such as car crashes, alongside subtler indicators of catastrophe like dripping taps and melting ice-shelves, Sellers’ works present a compelling meditation on the prevailing macroeconomic, ecological and political forces that shape us.

Victor Lim Seaward (b. 1988, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) is an artist living and working in London. Seaward holds a BA in Art History and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2018 with an MA in Painting. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Brooke Benington, London (2023); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2022); Galerie Fabian Lang, Zurich (2022); Recent Activity, Birmingham (2019); and Lily Brooke, London (2019). Selected group exhibitions include: White Cube, Paris (2023); Tatjana Pieters Gallery, Ghent (2023); The Sunday Painter, London (2022); Sculpture In The City 11th and 12th Edition, London (2022-24); Josh Lilley, London (2021); Gossamer Fog, London (2018); and Pierre Poumet, Bordeaux (2018).

Meredith Sellers (b. 1988, Baltimore, USA) is an artist and writer living and working in Philadelphia. Sellers holds a BFA from the MarylandInstitute College of Art and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work will be featured in an upcoming solo exhibition at Fragment Gallery (NY, USA). She has exhibited at Take It Easy, Atlanta, USA (2022); Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at UArts, Philadelphia, USA (2021); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA (2013); Lord Ludd, Vox Populi, Icebox Project Space, and Pressure Club, among others. Her work has been featured in Art Papers, Young Space, Maake Magazine, and White Column’s Curated Artist Registry. Curatorial projects include Chewing the Scenery at Crane Arts, The Midnight Sun at Pilot Projects (both co- curated with Jonathan Santoro), and Edith at Esther Klein Gallery. She is an editor for Philadelphia-based online art publication Title Magazine; her writing has appeared in publications including Hyperallergic, The Philadelphia Inquirer, ICA Philadelphia’s Notes, Pelican Bomb, and American Craft Magazine.