24 Facts About Helen Chadwick

Helen Chadwick was a British sculptor, photographer and installation artist.

Helen Chadwick was born on 18 May 1953 in Croydon, England.

Helen Chadwick's mother was a Greek refugee and her father from east London.

Helen Chadwick's parents met during the Second World War in Athens, Greece, and moved to live in Croydon in 1946.

Helen Chadwick's degree show Domestic Sanitation consisted of her and three other women, 'wearing' latex costumes painted directly on to the skin, engaging in a satirical feminist round of cleaning and grooming.

In 1976, Helen Chadwick moved to Hackney and enrolled in a Masters course at Chelsea College of Art.

Helen Chadwick began exhibiting regularly from 1977, gradually building her reputation as an artist.

Helen Chadwick's rise into the public sphere was marked by the inclusion of her work Ego Geometria Sum in a group exhibition entitled Summer Show I at the Serpentine.

In 1990 Helen Chadwick was invited to exhibit in a photography festival in Houston, Texas, where she met a local artist, David Notarius.

In 1995, Helen Chadwick took up an artist residency in the assisted conception unit at King's College Hospital, London, photographing IVF embryos rejected for implantation.

Helen Chadwick used the photos in Unnatural Selection, a series on which she was working when she died.

Helen Chadwick's work is included in the collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Tate and the Museum of Modern Art.

Helen Chadwick attempted to complicate the conventional passive objectification of women.

Helen Chadwick's performers wore another latex skin to cover their skin suggesting the imposition of idealised femininity while they carried out stereotypical female activities.

Helen Chadwick commented, "I felt compelled to use materials that were still bodily, that were still a kind of self-portrait, but did not rely on representation of my own body".

Helen Chadwick elaborated her interest in deconstructing gender binaries in a lecture she gave in 1991: "in language dual structures are defined as oppositional: where we have self, there must be other; gender is male or female, and most problematic and absurd of all is the split between mind and body".

Helen Chadwick's use of it suggests that attempting to encapsulate personal history is a Herculean task, requiring great strength and courage.

Piss Flowers is a work made up of twelve sculptures that Helen Chadwick made while on a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, in February 1991.

Helen Chadwick describes the flowers as a "metaphysical conceit for the union of two people expressing themselves bodily".

Helen Chadwick utilised the ceremonial character of the elegant neo-classical rooms of the upper galleries to house an installation made up of a number of autonomous artworks.

Helen Chadwick set out to deconstruct binary opposition by reducing the work to present flesh as flesh.

Helen Chadwick died suddenly at age 42 of a heart attack in 1996.

Helen Chadwick's expanded use of materials can be seen carried through the work of many these artists.

The Richard Saltoun Gallery in London represents the estate of Helen Chadwick, and has continued to show her work.