Sarah Mayhew Craddock on a new show at Modern Art Oxford by film maker Lynn Hershman Leeson

Paranoia appears to loom large amongst the curators at Modern Art Oxford, what with recent exhibitions from Barbara Kruger, Debora Delmar Corp., and now American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson addressing identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in an era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and technology, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds.

Or perhaps new media and the surveillance heavy society that we exist within means that paranoia looms throughout, and the programming at Modern Art Oxford is quite simply art imitating life.

Questions of privacy in an era of surveillance, the relationship between real and virtual worlds, and the mutability of identity in an ever-changing world are explored in the work of American artist and filmmaker, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s work currently on show as part of a major solo exhibition, Origins of the Species (Part 2), at Modern Art Oxford.

“In her 50 year career, Hershman Leeson has pushed the boundaries of art-making by experimenting with new media,” comments curator Ciara Moloney. “Origins of the Species (Part 2) sits within the context of Modern Art Oxford’s theme of the commons in which the exhibitions explore the impact of new technology on the public realm.”

Hershman Leeson (born 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio) established herself as a painter in the culturally unsettled San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s. As a conceptual young artist, she was prophetic. She possessed multimedia extensions and futuristic ambitions that have developed throughout her career Since the 90s, she is perhaps best known for directing a collection of films starring Tilda Swinton. However, Hershman Leeson had turned her lens on herself long before she trained it on Swinton. Blurring the boundaries between acting and life with years long performances that possess echoes of well-known artists Grayson Perry and Cindy Sherman, Hershman Leeson was living a fictional history long before those artists had made the headlines.

In the mid-1970 she would don a wig and dark glasses, she hired a private detective to tail Roberta Breitmore, a 30-something divorced woman with an apartment of her own, a therapist, and a troubled past. She had the detective photograph her everyday movements as documentary, analogue forecasters of the digital surveillance and identity theft that now concern and affect so many of us. Roberta Breitmore was Hershman Leeson’s alter ego – using art as an advance warning system.

This exhibition presents a broad sweep of Hershman Leeson’s unsettling work that spans more than 50 years and combines art with social commentary, particularly the relationship between humans and technology. Evolving from a tradition of installation art and performance with an emphasis on interactivity, Hershman Leeson has received international critical acclaim for the work on display here; an exhibition that conveys the diversity of her oeuvre, from drawings and paintings produced in the 1960s, to the documentation of performances from the 70s and 80s, through to photographs, moving image, site-specific interventions, and artificial intelligence works from the 1990s.

There’s an abiding interest in science, the environment, and real-world concerns in her practice that has seen her create a cinematic installation, The Infinity Engine, developed with scientists in the USA and genetic scientists from the Structural Genomics Unit at the University of Oxford. This installation combines film, data and sculpture to explore the limits and implications of genetic research.

New York gallerist Bridget Donahue, said of exhibiting Hershman Leeson’s work, “I’m drawn to those who engage with the long game,” and Hershman Leeson certainly does that. Internationally acclaimed for her pioneering use of new technologies and her investigations of issues that are now recognized as key to the working of our society. This landmark exhibition of Hershman Leeson’s multi-disciplinary practice will reveal her endlessly inventive and engaging work, a looking-glass feminism, and an overwhelming sense of the prescience and continued relevance of her artistic concerns that span five decades.

Lynn Hershman Leeson - Origins of the Species (Part 2) is at Modern Art Oxford until August 9. modernartoxford.org.uk