A week ago I went to the private view of Lindsay Seer's installation at Matt's Gallery, Mile End. Matt's. Where is the work? Is it in the looped video of S.'s narrative, which you watch as if in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, to which abutts a large three-dimensional regulus crystal - the latter redolent of alchemy, the former - though it also intersects with the Roman locus of much of the action, as there is a replica in the Villa Borghese: Globe - calls to mind Frances Yates' use of the Renaissance theatre as a memory system? Is it in the adjacent video loop of Christine's interviews with Swedish academics on the life of Queen Christina of Sweden, her alter ego? Outside in the reading room area, there is a documentary video of Michael Newman and Mark Hutchinson discussing photography, theatre and memory. This is next to a pile of copies of a book, ostensibly by M. Anthony Penwill - in which the gallery director appears as a character. Is this the work? Some of it? All of it? I will not disclose the narrative, which hovers on the edge of fact and fiction (if there is a simple edge), but only urge you to go and see this exhibition - and collect your copy of the book, which is sure to become a collector's item. This is the best show I've seen in 2009 and rivals Mike Nelson's brilliant 'Coral Reef' at Matt's in 2000, and recently bought by the Tate. Coral Reef.
