One of the most important women artists to emerge in the last 30 years, Helen Chadwick stands at the intersection of conceptual-performative art and feminist thinking. Through her teaching posts she has influenced an entire generation of contemporary British artists, and in her career as a practitioner, Chadwick is recognised as one of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize.
In Chadwick’s current exhibition, Bad Blooms, Richard Saltoun Gallery proudly presents the artist’s 13-piece photographic series, The Wreaths to Pleasure (1992 – 93). Currently on show as a complete series for the first time in nearly 10 years, the photographs illustrate the artist’s interest in the fleeting collisions between visual and sensorial pleasures and repulsions, ultimately leading to an analysis of the fluidity of our existence through an exploration of the matter that constitutes it.
Offering various scenarios of flowers and fruits suspended in both pleasant and poisonous liquids, such as tomato juice, melted chocolate, detergents and soaps like Windowlene, Fairy, Ariel and Swarfega, each photograph unites the notions of desire and repulsion, life and death, beauty and ugliness. Taken from above, these documentations of immobilised viscous matter propose an abstracted aerial-style view of Chadwick’s delectably sculptural, yet transient installations.
Helen Chadwick, Bad Blooms, until 28 November, Richard Saltoun Gallery, 111 Great Titchfield Street, London
Further information can be found at www.richardsaltoun.com
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Credits
1. Helen Chadwick, Wreath to Pleasure No 13 (1992-1993). Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery.