Helen Chadwick
Helen Chadwick (18 May 1953 – 15 March 1996) was a British sculptor, photographer and installation artist.[1] In 1987, she became one of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize.[2] Chadwick was known for "challenging stereotypical perceptions of the body in elegant yet unconventional forms. Her work draws from a range of sources, from myths to science, grappling with a plethora of unconventional, visceral materials that included chocolate, lambs tongues and rotting vegetable matter. Her skilled use of traditional fabrication methods and sophisticated technologies transform these unusual materials into complex installations.[3] Maureen Paley noted that "Helen was always talking about craftsmanship—a constant fount of information". Binary oppositions was a strong theme in Chadwick's work; seductive/repulsive, male/female, organic/man-made. Her combinations "emphasise yet simultaneously dissolve the contrasts between them".[4] Her gender representations forge a sense of ambiguity and a disquieting sexuality blurring the boundaries of ourselves as singular and stable beings."[3]
For the British musician and singer, see Helen Chadwick (musician).
Helen Chadwick
Early life and education[edit]
Helen Chadwick was born on 18 May 1953 in Croydon, England.[1] Her mother was a Greek refugee and her father from east London. Her parents met during the Second World War in Athens, Greece, and moved to live in Croydon in 1946.[1] After Chadwick left Croydon High School, she embarked on a Fine Art Foundation course at Croydon College,[1] then went on to study at Brighton Polytechnic (1973–76). She recalled, "Traditional media were never dynamic enough… right from early on in art school, I wanted to use the body to create a set of inter-relationships with the audience".[5] Her degree show Domestic Sanitation (1976) consisted of her and three other women, 'wearing' latex costumes painted directly on to the skin,[5] engaging in a satirical feminist round of cleaning and grooming.[5] In 1976, Chadwick moved to Hackney and enrolled in a Masters course at Chelsea College of Art (1976–77).[6] In 1977, she and two dozen other artists moved into Beck Road, Hackney, a double strip of Victorian terraces that was earmarked for demolition. After squatting for two years they persuaded the Inner London Education Authority to rent out, rather than demolish, the houses. Beck Road became a hive of home studios whose residents included Maureen Paley, Ray Walker and Genesis P-Orridge.[1]
Gender representation[edit]
Chadwick’s earlier work utilised her naked form, questioning the representation of the female body and addressing what Chadwick called "the issue of the female body as a site of desire".[4] She attempted to complicate the conventional passive objectification of women. "I was looking at a vocabulary for desire where I was the subject and the object and the author" she said; "I felt by directly taking all theses roles, the normal situation in which the viewer operated as a kind of voyeur broke down".[4] Her BA graduate performance Domestic Sanitation (1976) attempted to highlight the distinction between nudity and nakedness. Her performers wore another latex skin to cover their skin suggesting the imposition of idealised femininity while they carried out stereotypical female activities.[9]
Many critics, including former feminist colleagues, concluded that she reinforced the stereotypes she sought to subvert. As was the case for other women artists that were reclaiming their bodies through their art practice, she was accused of regressive female narcissism.[4] Chadwick declared that "I'm disappointed that a false rationalism is used as a stick with which to measure what I'm doing when I am looking to cross the taboos that have been instigated. I hate being hauled up as an example of negative women's work." In 1988 Chadwick made a conscious decision "...not to represent my body.... It immediately declares female gender and I wanted to be more deft."[4] Her practice then moved inside the body to flesh in her Meat Abstracts (1989) and Meat Lamps (1989-91) and to bodily excrement’s in Piss Flowers (1991–92). Chadwick commented, "I felt compelled to use materials that were still bodily, that were still a kind of self-portrait, but did not rely on representation of my own body"[4]
Through her career Chadwick’s concerns with gender representation moved from the objectification of women to more closely examine what gender is. Working in a time surrounded by debates around the cultural construction of gender, her work was fuelled by writings of Julia Kristeva and Michel Foucault. She would often cite Herculine Barbin, a nineteenth century hermaphrodite, whose memoirs were discovered and printed by Foucault in 1980. Chadwick commented, "Why do we feel compelled to read gender, and automatically wish to sex the body before us so we can orientate our desire and thus gain pleasure or reject what we see?"[5] Chadwick’s Piss Flowers (1991–92) questions the singularity and specificity of gender through an inversion of gender roles.[10] Chadwick elaborated her interest in deconstructing gender binaries in a lecture she gave in 1991: "in language dual structures are defined as oppositional: where we have self, there must be other; gender is male or female, and most problematic and absurd of all is the split between mind and body"[5]
Exhibitions[edit]
Of Mutability (1986)[edit]
Of Mutability was Chadwick's first major solo exhibition, held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1986. Chadwick utilised the ceremonial character of the elegant neo-classical rooms of the upper galleries to house an installation made up of a number of autonomous artworks. One room was at the centre of the exhibition and took the name of The Oval Court (1984–86), an ovoid platform that lay in the middle of the space. The platform presents a twelve-part collage of layered blue toned A4 photocopies made directly of the artist’s naked form, dead animals, plants and drapery suspended in an ovoid pool. The work speaks to the still life, evoking vanitas tradition in its subtle depictions of the transience of the things we surround ourselves with. Twelve figures, according to the artist’s notes, represent the "12 gates to paradise", where she achieves "oneness with all living things".[9] Five golden spheres rest atop the platform corresponding to the finger placing’s of a huge hand, alluding to the touch of divine. On the walls of this room were photographs of the artist weeping, a Venetian glass mirror and printouts of computer-rendered drawings of the Baroque columns from the baldacchino of St Peter's in Rome. Chadwick’s use of her own body invokes a human attachment to the world, suggesting that the concept of self is infinitely subject to change.[5]
The second room housed Carcass (1986), a two-metre-high glass tower of rotting vegetable matter that moves and lives. It begins to compost, generating new organisms over time, Chadwick had to top it up daily to maintain its levels.[5] During the exhibition a small leak appeared in the tower and in a state of panic the ICA staff laid the column, splitting a seam. When they attempted to lay it on its side, ten gallons of fermented liquid sloshed and blew off the end of the tower. Newspapers broadcast this accident, bringing attention to Chadwick as an exciting nonconforming artist.[1]
Death and legacy[edit]
Chadwick died suddenly at age 42 of a heart attack in 1996.[1][15] Although they declared no proof, pathologists suggested a link between her heart attack and a viral infection causing a myocarditis – an inflammation of the heart muscle that could have been triggered anywhere between the last few years of her life and the last weeks.[1]
In 2004–2005 a retrospective of Chadwick’s work organised by the Barbican Art Gallery toured a four major galleries. These included Barbican Art Gallery (London, UK), Liljevalchs konsthall (Stockholm, Sweden), Trapholt Kunstmuseum (Kolding, Denmark) and Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, UK). In the preface for the catalogue, Marina Warner states that after the shock of Chadwick’s death it took some time for "interest to return and for understanding develop of her critical opus and her place in contemporary art".[16]
Chadwick's impact on the British art scene as an artist and teacher helped pave the way for the Young British Artist (YBA) generation. Her expanded use of materials can be seen carried through the work of many these artists. Without Chadwick's Cacao, for example, it is impossible to imagine Anya Gallaccio's chocolate and flower installations.[17] Since Chadwick's Barbican organised retrospective, the full measure of her contribution to the trajectory of contemporary British art is starting to be realised.[4]: 44 The Richard Saltoun Gallery in London represents the estate of Helen Chadwick, and has continued to show the artist's work.[18] Works From The Estate (2013) marked what would have been the artists 60th birthday, showing some of Chadwick's most famous works. The following year Bad Blooms (2014) exhibited Chadwick's Wreaths of Pleasure (1992–93).[18]
Eight of Chadwick's notebooks, which reveal her ideas and critical practice through the making of a number of her works, are available online from The Leeds Museums & Galleries and the Henry Moore Institute Archive.[19]