Helen Cockburn

Biography

Exhibitions - Gallery Guide Links
Exhibitions - Full Listings
25 July - 13 August 2008		Three-person show at Halesworth Gallery, Steeple End, Halesworth, Suffolk
8 June - 21 July 2008		Suffolk Showcase, Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery
7/8, 21/22, 28/29 June 2008		Open Studio at The House on the Hill, Chediston, Halesworth, Suffolk
17 May - 26 May 2008		Suffolk Open Studios Showcase Exhibition at Blackthorpe Barn, Rougham, nr Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
3 May - 26 May 2008		Suffolk Open Studios exhibition at The Ferini Gallery, Pakefield, Lowestoft, Suffolk
15 March - 10 May 2008		Mixed show at The Greyfriars Arts Centre, St James Street, Kings Lynn, Norfolk
Ongoing		St Davids Studio Gallery, Nun Street, St Davids, Pembrokeshire
2 November - 28 November 2007		Solo exhibition at The Fisher Theatre, Broad Street, Bungay, Suffolk
18 August - 15 September 2007		The Eyestorm Open, Eyestorm Gallery, St Nicholas Street, Ipswich
2007		Harleston Gallery, Harleston, Norfolk
2006		The Cut Open, Halesworth
2005		Buckenham Gallery, Southwold

Statement

My work is concerned with the relationship between language and images - the idea that words are themselves images - and an attempt to create visual equivalents to the sensations evoked by particular words or phrases.

While poetry, music and place are the usual starting points, the nature of the work becomes apparent only during the process of making. I do not make preparatory drawings so chance plays an important part in the process with the materials themselves often dictating the direction of each piece. The aim is always to provoke and stimulate the imagination by suggestion, enabling narratives and associations to arise intuitively rather than consciously.

I work with gouache and found materials - wood, stone, string, paper and metal - built up in layers over a painted surface and then reworked with combinations of paint, pencil, pen and ink. The materials are collected from around my house and garden, from the street or beach and recycled from discarded work, old books and scraps of card and paper. The grid format provides a formal structure but has endless permutations in terms of composition, colour and texture, particularly in its potential for variations in scale, and a content which is perhaps as much musical as it is visual.

'It is signs which have no exact meaning that provoke a magic sense.' Miro