Opening: 04 September 2026, 18:00

Exhibition Type: Solo Exhibition

Artist: Sean Wilson

Venue: BIJOU PROJECT SPACE

Address: 178 Lower Main Road, Observatory

This body of work comprises four sets of twelve photographs of perhaps Africa’s most photographed natural wonder: Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

The first set consists of commercially produced tourist photographs from the 1950s, found in an envelope amongst my maternal Grandmother’s possessions. The second set are photographs made by myself in June 2024 whilst on a journey to introduce my son to the land of my mother’s birth. Faced with the futile task of photographing the Falls themselves, I instead found myself photographing representations of the Falls in the town of Victoria Falls. The third set are water-damaged transparencies taken by my paternal grandfather on a family holiday in 1969. The final set features photographs made by colonial-era photographers from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Each set reframes the Falls in different ways — from the constructed gaze of the tourist industry, to the familial, the contemporary and reflexive, to the historical and colonial. This temporal and stylistic diversity nudges the viewer to move beyond the clichés that so often govern our visual encounters of the world. By juxtaposing four similar views of the Falls from different eras, I hope to disrupt the tyranny of any singular way of looking at the world and bring into question photography’s stubborn – albeit tenuous – claims towards truth. Ultimately, this project explores how photography both expands and limits our ways of seeing.

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Description:

The Four Kings is a photographic project documenting a single oak tree with four trunks in Kongeeikene. Estimated to be between 500 and 600 years old, the tree was photographed over the course of a year.

Now at the height of its life, it may, under favourable conditions, endure for centuries more, yet it already bears visible signs of wear. The causes remain uncertain, but this project does not seek a scientific explanation. Instead, it takes the tree as a visual and existential point of departure.

“For many years, I have regarded this tree as an extraordinary natural presence. Since 2018, I have consciously turned to subjects that I believe carry significance for the future – forms that embody beauty, vulnerability, and complexity.”The Four Kings is both a tribute and a quiet warning. It documents the tree as an artwork in itself, while also suggesting a longer temporal arc in which it may come to reflect our own relationship to – and destruction of – the natural world. The tree remains still as its surroundings shift. In this, it becomes both witness and mirror.