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Exhibitions

Gorgeously Repulsive - Helen Chadwick At The Barbican

By Camelia Gupta

03/06/2004

Image: Shows a black and white photograph of Helen Chadwick, dressed in black, and standing in a room full of her work. There are two framed images on the wall, while on the floor there are scattered, different shaped blocks on which have been scanned images.

Photo: portrait of the artist. In background: Ego Geometria Sum, 1982-4. © Helen Chadwick Estate. Photo: Edward Woodman.

Camelia Gupta travelled to London to immerse herself in the work of a truly influential artist, though 24 Hour Museum readers should note that some of the work may not be suitable for children.

Running until August 1 at the Barbican Art Gallery, Helen Chadwick: A Retrospective is the first major survey of one of the founders of British art as we know it today.

Helen Chadwick’s (1953-1996) art is an exploration of desire, lust, identity and humanity. She described the feelings her work provoked as "gorgeously repulsive, exquisitely fun, and dangerously beautiful".

The Meat Abstracts demonstrate Chadwick’s subtly disturbing formal techniques, allying the clarity provided by light-boxes with visceral compositions of lumps of meat.

They present a contradictorily 'clean' art of excess and dissolution, refusing easy oppositions.

Image: Shows a photograph of a large slab of fatty meat, which has been placed on overlapping pieces of gold and blue cloth. At the top of the image there is a large golden sphere.

Photo: Meat Abstract No. 8, 1989. Polaroid photograph. © Helen Chadwick Estate. Photo: Edward Woodman.

This strategy is immensely effective and the sharpness of the images allows no escape from the imagery; I find them nausea-inducing, bringing me back to my own relationship with my innards/borders…

The overload is pushed to extremes in the wonderful Cacao/Wreaths to Pleasure. A vast circular container, with a distinctly phallic erection in its centre, is filled with chocolate, through which air forces itself to the surface, producing bubbles reminiscent of the 'mud, glorious mud' of a hot spring.

The sounds of plopping and bubbling underline the associations with mud and excrement, which in combination with the utterly overpowering smell make this a dizzying experience.

I’m feeling sick and suffocated by the richness. The beautiful becomes toxic.

Image: Shows a photograph of a bubbling pool of liquid chocolate, on the wall behind which there are various circular works placed at different heights.

Photo: Cacao, 1994. Chocolate, aluminium, steel, electrical apparatus. © Helen Chadwick Estate. Photo: Edward Woodman.

It’s like being trapped in a sadistic chocolate factory and you can almost hear Chadwick giggling under the sound of the bubbling chocolate. I find it hard not to giggle myself, there’s something wonderfully beguiling about the endlessly slopping spectacle.

There’s a huge amount of wit and sly humour in this exhibition. The notorious Piss Flowers, alien in appearance and stark against an astroturf lawn were produced from imprints taken of patterns made by Chadwick and her lover by pissing into snow.

The pistils of the flowers, pointing up into the air, are produced by Chadwick (the female body produces a hot, strong and focussed stream of urine) whereas the delicate tracery is the result of her partner’s more diffuse 'male' pissing.

This produces an incisive reversal of traditional genital relations and with it, phallic superiority.

Serious themes are not smothered by po-faced solemnity, instead they are illuminated by games.

Image: Shows a photograph of a series of white cartoon flower shaped plinths, set on a fake grass floor. On top of each plinth is a white cast, which protrudes at varying heights, and on various levels, into the air.

Photo: Piss Flowers, 1991-2. Bronze, cellulose lacquer. © Helen Chadwick Estate. Photo: Anti Kuivalainen.

In an accompanying film, a friend points out that Chadwick was deeply in love with her partner; the flowers are also a touching record of a shared moment.

The exhibition continues at the Woodbridge Chapel with a restaging of her 1988 site-specific piece, Blood Hyphen.

Climbing the stairs of a small chapel to the pulpit, you poke your head through a false ceiling. You find yourself in a dark space in which a single red laser cuts through smoke to strike a large transparency (images of cells taken from a cervical smear test).

Connotations of God and the body, dissection and disease, physical and spiritual introversion, clash to produce a powerful atmosphere that refuses to be pinned down.

Image: Shows a photograph of someone, pictured from behind, looking at a red wand of light, which is shooting into a coloured panel in a false floor.

Photo: Blood Hyphen 1998/2004. Site specific installation with laser, smoke, photographic transparencies. Woodbridge Chapel. © Helen Chadwick Estate. Photo: Edward Woodman.

In Chadwick’s work we find a fierce, rigorous intelligence allied to a visceral, sensual, formally inventive practice (which is executed with a healthy dose of raspberry blowing).

This is a combination that is all too rare and marks her as one of our most important artists, whose concerns/methodology anticipated a whole raft of later British work. Obvious 'descendants' include The Chapman Brothers and Mona Hatoum.

However influential she is, the exhibition also seems oddly of its time. Her work is far less coy about its seriousness than the current crop of art 'stars'.

The fascinating documentary accompanying the show opens at Chadwick’s memorial service, at which artist Anya Gallaccio scattered hundreds of flowers.

Guests were asked to take them away so that "everyone left with a piece of Helen".

Image: Shows a photograph of a circular work in which a large number of orange flowers are squashed into a small area and depicted from above. There is an openign at the centre of the circle in which a small dark purple fruit, possibly a plum, has been placed.

Photo: Wreath to Pleasure No.1, 1992-3. Cibachrome photographs, powder coated steel, glass, aluminium faced MDF. © Helen Chadwick Estate. Photo: Edward Woodman.

Submerging yourself in her world and taking "a piece of Helen" away is an exhilarating experience, a sensual and conceptual adventure…

Admission to see Blood Hyphen at Woodbridge Chapel, Woodbridge Street, London EC1 is free and the installation is open Thursday to Sunday between 14.00 and 18.00.

Guided tours depart on foot from the Barbican Art Gallery every Sunday at 15.30.

Barbican Art Gallery
Gallery Floor, Level 3, Barbican Centre, London, EC2Y 8DS, England

T: 0845 121 6828
Open: Daily 11.00-20.00 Tue & Thu 11.00-18.00 Time Out First Thursdays open until 21.00
Closed: Closed 24-26 December, open New Year's Day from 12.00

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