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Helen Chadwick

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Helen Chadwick (1953 – March 15, 1996) was a British artist. Chadwick studied at Croydon College of Art, Brighton Polytechnic and then at the Chelsea School of Art. She has often been identified as a feminist, with several of her works addressing the role and image of woman in society. Her work often reflected her sometimes uneasy relationship with her own body, using organic materials, such as meat, flowers and chocolate. She is perhaps most famous for Piss Flowers (1991–92), bronze sculptures cast from cavities made when urinating in the snow by both Helen Chadwick and her partner David Notarius. Earlier works include Viral Landscapes, a series of photographs from the late 1980s where blotches (actually magnified images of cells from her body) are superimposed over landscapes, and Meat Abstracts (1989) large photographs of meat juxtaposed with leather and fabric. "Right from early art school, I wanted to use the body to create a sense of inner relationships with the audience." To look at her work in the context of art history it is interesting to see the differences between her approach to her own body and the way the female figure was used in the past. "In Ego Geometria Sum: The laborers X" of 1984, she is not attempting to use her body in a decorative or seductive way, attempting to lift a large box covered with a picture of her own body, she is literally struggling under the weight of her own image, which was something perhaps doublely applicable to her as both a woman and an artist in the public eye. So in her earlier work she questioned the role of the female body in art as a decorative object, just as decorative and aesthetic ideas about art themselves had been questioned in the 20th century. "I made a conscience decision in 1988 not to represent my body. It immediately declares female gender and I wanted to be more deft." She thereby abandoned this practice and moved inside the body, to human flesh, and that which is common to all of us but we avoid thinking about. She did not abandon the themes of sexual identity and gender identity however. Her Cibachrome transparencies of 1990 entitled "Eroticism" depict two brains side by side. Among her last works are a series of photographs of dead human embryos. Ten of her works, including Cyclops Cameo and Opal, were destroyed in the May 2004 fire at the Momart warehouse in London. Chadwick was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1987. She died in 1996 from a viral infection that weakens heart muscle and prevents it from pumping. Helen Chadwick was extremely healthy before she died, but it is ironic that it was a viral infection as her Viral Landscapes she made from her own body she considered to be her best work.

Bibliography

Helen Chadwick, Mary Horlock (contributor), Eva Martischnig (contributor), Mark Sladen (editor) Helen Chadwick, Hatje Cantz Publishers (July 2004) ISBN 377571393-X
N.P. James (Editor) Helen Chadwick CV Publications (September 1, 2005) ISBN 190472745-X
Helen Chadwick Enfleshings Aperture Book (November 1989) ISBN 089381394-X
Helen Chadwick Stilled Lives Portfolio Gallery (December 31, 1995) ISBN 0952060833
Of Mutability: Helen Chadwick (exhibition catalogue, London, ICA, 1986)
Effluvia: Helen Chadwick (exhibition catalogue, essay M. Allthorpe-Guyton, London, Serpentine Gal., 1994)
Rideal, Liz, Mirror Mirror: Self-portraits by women artists 2001 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 12 September 2001 – 20 January 2002), p. 101
Rideal, Liz, Insights: Self Portrait 2005, p. 17