Helen Acklam
Helen Acklam lives in Bristol and works at BV Studios, Bedminster. Since a return to a full-time art practice in 2012, (MA Fine Art, University of Brighton) she has participated in collaborations, residencies and exhibitions in London, Brighton, Hastings and Bristol.
Directed by her personal experiences, Helen is interested in ideas and questions that emerge with an exploration of the self and identity, and the connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures.
Helen is interested in creating opportunities for artists to work together. In 2016 she set up The Unit in central Bristol, and in 2019, The Garage – a residency space in Bristol for collaboration, talks, experimentation.
Works
Shapeshifter
This work was made during lockdown. I welcomed the chance to turn away from the cacophony of noise and images and set myself some basic and limiting rules – no phone, computer, just drawing materials for one hour a day. My stimulus was an old family photograph, an article about a Jasper Johns’ exhibition, a quote by JG Ballard and a corner of an El Greco painting. Eventually, shapes and ideas emerged and I wanted to paint. The palette and materials were a response to the things I’d been thinking about – ways that meaning is constructed and resides within the body; painting as a bodily experience; muscle memory; the intertwined chaotic nature of memory and time; a search for language and a longing for completeness, resolve.
album
This work considers the themes of public and private, disturbance and familiarity, dislocation and connection and the role of story telling, within the family and within society, to shape identity and inform our sense of belonging.
There is an attempt to unify fractured experiences, through a process of tearing and wrapping, and to acknowledge the value of intuition, imagination and the unconscious to talk about these things.