HelenA Pritchard

at Rochelle School

10 - 15 October 2023

“The highest level of expression is not to create something from nothing, but rather to nudge something that already exists so that the world shows up more vividly…” Lee Ufan

TJ Boulting is delighted to present at Rochelle School an exhibition by HelenA Pritchard of new works of sculpture, collage and drawing encompassing  her use of found materials and objects via a formal language that often refers to her background as a painter.

In the garden there are three works of cast metal of found objects, often sourced from her walks in both London and the countryside of Shropshire, assembled then painted in enamel in bright primary strokes of colour. Their forms at once stand proud and distinct but also camouflage themselves into their surroundings, referencing their beginnings as discarded detritus in the landscape but also their new salvation and elevated status as physical  objects.

Inside there are freestanding forms of assembled multiple and various objects, again discarded found objects and scraps but brought together in tall towering forms, literally elevating them from their humble beginnings.

As she says: “I’m trying to capture everything into my work; art history, identity, feminism, poetry, symmetry, anarchy, meditation, materiality, issues of the now, whatever I find or think that is interesting and adds value.  I guess this is a reflection on our time, we are dealing with so much material history and the accessibility of ‘everything’, time has been compressed and expanded in an instant I like to start with the something in existence that is discarded or found, it makes for complication. This is my process of turning a bad situation, an imbalance, feeble materials, broken invalid objects into a positive balanced art work. It’s what I find myself in, this awareness of situation, a material struggle. I grew up with these tensions in South Africa, so they are played out between the materiality and context in my work. The orchestration of balance from the negative space, a starting point of it can be a mould from some consumerist product, an off-cut of these systems of society, a metaphysical thought, the invisible lines. I’m reflecting  on these adversities; walking in the countryside the left agricultural items, construction materials in the city, consumerist products, that the gallery and artist throw away, they are collected for their natural formal characteristics, and worked into a positive transformed art object.”