Helen Cammock
Visual Arts recipient 2023
Helen Cammock is an artist whose practice spans film, photography, print, text, song and performance. Her work examines mainstream historical and contemporary narratives about Blackness, womanhood, oppression and resistance, wealth and power, poverty and vulnerability. Cammock’s works often cut across time and geography, layering multiple voices; investigating the cyclical nature of histories in her visual and aural assemblages. Throughout her practice is an interest in storytelling; who gets to tell stories, who they’re telling them for and why.
“To be able to define my research, my time, my focus, my production and the ways in which ideas are developed and discarded in equal measure. The opportunity to take further risks. A support net that means I can find time to develop a practise around writing in a more consolidated way. To be able to embrace failures as progress; as openings to new ways of seeing and thinking. This is what this award means to me. I thank the Foundation, the nominators and the judges for supporting me and offering this opportunity.”
In 2017, Cammock won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and in 2019 was the joint recipient of the Turner Prize. She has exhibited and performed worldwide with recent and current solo shows including I Will Keep My Soul, UNO Gallery, New Orleans, USA; Bass Notes and SiteLines, Amant, New York, USA (2023); I Will Keep My Soul, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, USA, (2023); Behind The Eye Is The Promise Of Rain, Kestner Gesellshaft, Hannover, Germany (2022); Concrete Feathers and Porcelain Tacks, The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK (2021), Beneath the Surface of Skin; STUK Art Centre, Leuven, Belgium (2021); They Call It Idlewild, Wysing, UK (2020); Che Si Può Fare, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2019); Che Si Può Fare, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2019) and The Long Note, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2019); VOID, Derry, Northern Ireland (2018). She has participated in group shows including Breathing, Hamburger Kunstalle, Hamburg, Germany (2022) and Radio Ballads, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2022).
Examples of work
IF YOU TAKE EVERYTHING YOU WANT, 2023
Stencil, paint, 9m x 3m. Large-scale site-specific wall text work created as part of I Will Keep My Soul, with the text written for the book. Presented at Art + Practice (Los Angeles, 2023).
I WILL KEEP MY SOUL (EXTRACT), 2023
Book and film. 1 hour 48 mins duration (extract 3m 47s). Convening polyphonous voices from past and present, I Will Keep My Soul is an orchestral layering of photography, historical documents, poetry and interviews, all rooted in the social history, geography and community of New Orleans. Presented at Art + Practice (Los Angeles, 2023) and University of New Orleans Gallery (New Orleans, 2023). The book is released internationally.
BASS NOTES AND SITELINES, 2022
Fabric banner (canvas, cotton and wool), 2m x 3m. Part of Radio Ballads at Serpentine North Gallery, Offsite. Presented at Serpentine Galleries (London, 2022) and Amant (New York, 2023).
SIT ALONGSIDE AND FEEL ME BREATHE, 2021
Screen print, billboard and vinyl, various dimensions. An Art on the Underground commission including tube map cover and multiple print installations across TFL stations over 18 months. (Image credit: Thierry Bal)