Thinking
Through
Shapes
Before taking on it’s own life as a 3D form, my initial ideas generate from shapes, textures, sketches and collages. The 2D grows into the 3D, where my tactile practice combines many techniques together to create a visual language.
Starting out with just audio from a cassette tape, the absent figures in this project provide me with a tool to generate mark making, shapes, forms and textures from the sound. My process of creating work is performative in it’s creation, as well as it’s staging and curation. In the same way the discovery of the archive audio files inspired my practice, this photograph of me at the time of some of the audio was recorded was important reference for generating forms, movement and colour to inspire my 3D forms.
Materials: collage papers, procreate.
Dimensions: 56x47cm
Figure 1. Helena age 4. Stroud, 2006.
Photo: Sue Gardner.
Figure 2. Negative space 1. Procreate, September 2024.
Figure 3. Negative space 2. Procreate, September 2024.
Figure 4. Collage of shapes. Animation, September 2024.
Visualising Sounds
Generating texture and shape, this map traces an abstract and performative journey of my childhood. The mark making here is my direct response and translation of the sounds heard in the archive audio. This visualisation, for me, is an unconventional script, providing ‘stage directions’, ‘narrative’ and ‘characters’ in the doodles that form across the page.
Introducing these marks freely into my line of thinking to see how the patterns, sculpture and sound generate performativity together.
Materials: Pencil, pastel, highlighter, charcoal, chalk, marker pen, biro on paper.
Screen printing on teabag paper.
Dimensions: 111x103cm ~ 150x200cm
Figure 5. Visualising Sounds. Stroud, January 2025.
Photo: Helena Gardner.
Figure 6. Screen print shapes. RSA, February 2025.
Photo: Helena Gardner.
Figure 7. Collage Ladder 3. Stroud, January 2025.
Photo: Helena Gardner.
Figure 8. Collage Ladder 2. Stroud, January 2025.
Photo: Helena Gardner.
Figure 9. Collage Ladder 1. Stroud, January 2025.
Photo: Helena Gardner.
Collage
Ladder
Theatrical, fragile and dynamic - I am interested in the way an audience is forced to interact with sculptural installation in a physical way. In an attempt to lift my shapes off the page and venture into three dimensional forms, this experiment allowed me to embody movement and performance in my work through suspension, delicacy and negative space. This experimental tumbling collage embodies these qualities, while your proximity to the ladder changes your interpretation of the shapes: appearing to be floating from further away, and close up the delicate string joining each part becoming visible again. It appears to capture moving and falling in dynamic motion which is a quality that I want to bring into my larger 3D forms.
Materials: Mixed papers, machine stitch and thread.
Dimensions: 300x40cm.