Viewing Room #4 - vee speers



After having placed her works in numerous collections in Scandinavia over the years, we are thrilled to officially announce our collaboration with the Australian born, Paris based artist Vee Speers.

Vee Speers fell in love with photography at an early age, assisting her father in the darkroom, mesmerised by seeing his portraits appear like magic.  Following art school in Brisbane in the 80’s, she worked as a Stills Photographer at the ABC Television in Sydney. In 1990, a short stay in France became a permanent move to Paris which, according to Speers, is a city with ‘unlimited potential and endless creative inspiration’. 

By the end of the 90’s, Speers’ path was being forged as a photo artist, and since then she has been engaging viewers around the world with the dramatic tension of  her storytelling through portraiture. 

Speers has exhibited in museums, galleries, festivals and International Art Fairs in London, Paris, Miami, NYC, Atlanta, China, Ireland, Singapore, Japan, Tunisia, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Sweden, Italy, Norway, Luxembourg Athens and Arles, and her work has been published on the covers of Chance Magazine, China Life Magazine,  BLINK, Fotomagazin Germany, Zoom, Public Art, Photo International, Images Magazine,  A Conceptual Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, Genti di Fotografia, Italy, The Sunday Times UK, Russian Photo and Video, Swedish Photo with features in  Shooter, Zoom, Art Investor, Germany, Shots UK, Photo District News NYC, Photographica Tokyo, EYEMAZING, American Black + White, Milk, Fotomagazin, Chinese Photography, Bloom, Arte Al Limite, etc.

Her first monograph ’Bordello’ with a foreword by Karl Lagerfeld, was published by Earbooks, Edel, and her second book ‘The Birthday Party’ was published by Dewi Lewis, UK. Her third monograph Bulletproof was published by Kehrer Verlag. 

Speers’ portraits have been acquired by Sir Elton John Collection, Michael Wilson Collection, Hoffman Collection U.S., Carter Potash Collection, Glen Bjørnholt Collection, Morten Viskum Collection, Alan Siegel, Lawrence Schiller, DZ Bank Germany,  Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum 21C, Kentucky George Eastman House, Hudson Bay Company Art Fund and many private collections around the world.



THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY - 2007

The Birthday Party eternalises the last days of childhood with timeless portraits that are at once hauntingly beautiful and provocative. Vee Speers explores the playful escapism of games of “dress-ups” in childhood and the encompassing notions of performance and play. These portraits remind us of our childhood, creating enigmatic stories that blur the line between reality and fiction, highlighting our need to escape into fantasy.​​



DYSTOPIA


DYSTOPIA - 2017

For the last part of the trilogy, Speers invents her own ​​​​​​​​​Dystopia, speaking directly of a world that has come unhinged. Yet even if the sun goes cold and fear is present, her imagery speaks of freedom.  The concerns, troubles, and every existing fear cross like arrows the bodies of these young, empowered men and women. No fixed identities and no determined genders. The characters are heroes, shamans, and fighters who appear invincible. They seem to come straight out of madness, a circus or a poem, from a distant past or the future. Maybe they come from a new mythology, Mad Max or a Tim Burton movie. This series is the end of a cycle as Speers brings a story which started ten years ago to a conclusion. A story for which she took photos of children for The Birthday Party, then six years later, with those same children in their adolescence for Bulletproof. Dystopia is the last act of this beautiful story. ​​

“I don’t like to follow the crowd.
I like to seduce, with images that are at once disturbing and beautiful but leaving a space for the viewer to enter my world.
My portraits combine elements which evoke conflicting
emotions that can surprise the viewer, telling a story that is somewhere between fantasy and reality, the obvious and the unexpected.”
— Vee Speers

IMMORTAL

IMMORTAL

We all think about our mortality but cannot imagine growing old. Our society is obsessed with freezing time and avoiding inevitable death and decay as long as possible. Vee Speers plays to these age-old sensibilities and timeless longings while riffing on the contemporary convergence of similar ideas, ideals, and forms that have invaded our consciousness in our media-driven, technology-rich consumer cultures.
At once alluring and disquieting, these portraits of naked beautiful youths are set against backdrops of Eden-like natural beauty or scenes of post-apocalyptic destruction. They are young and beautiful, but they seem isolated, exposed and vulnerable, trapped, distant, on guard, defiant, all alone in a strange land, and confronted by echoes of subliminal fears and insecurities. With the smooth gloss sheen of fashion-model perfection, Speers has created a new world that merges Mona Lisa's charm and mystery with the melancholy of Dorian Gray.
The surface is loaded with references to classical arts and the perfection of youthful beauty that has become the everyday obsession of Western culture. 

These Immortals are all like tragically fallen angels, eyes opened with animal intelligence, looking out onto an uncertain future, unaware of how perfectly beautiful they appear to be.

Text by Vee Speers

GUILTY - NOT GUILTY - 2023

Vee Speers presents a dynamic installation of photography and video for the first time, using a generative and interactive AI platform.

Speers has transformed her collection of original black and white criminal mug shots for Guilty Not Guilty, applying her hand-colouring technique fused with cutting-edge AI animation to bring each character to life with a bold and contemporary pop-art aesthetic.

Vee Speers defends the underdog, empowering the unlucky and misfortunate who were once condemned by society for petty crimes. She rewrites their stories with empathy and humour, giving them a second chance and a new voice and creating a place in today’s world.