Helen Barff

Helen works with objects – a piano, a train, a glass cup, a car or a collection of stones. She makes tactile, physical, direct remnants of a place / space, time or thing. The materials she uses reflect the main recurring themes in the work; light and touch.

Drawing has always formed the basis for Helen’s art practice. However, she uses a diversity of processes and materials. These include pencil on paper, camera-less photography, using fabric or appropriate approaches for specific projects. Felt is a recurring material. Helen works within a Beuysian history of the material, also drawing influences from Rachel Whiteread, Christo and Claude Heath.

Recent work has incorporated contact photography in the form of ‘photograms’. These are made with direct contact between the object and photographic paper. Where the light hits the paper, it is black. Helen took her growing collection of 109 stones and made photograms of them all. The stones have been collected for a number of years from points all over the world. Each stone is a dead weight. But in Stones I they appear as a weightless galaxy, each stone seeming to radiate light.

The conclusion of this process is a ritual wrapping of the stones in a fine, tight layer of felt; burying it again, in a meticulous, lengthy and tactile process. In contrast to the photograms, the felt stones seem to absorb light, as if blind. The felt around the stones acts like a second skin, both protective and concealing, as in an embalming or mummification.

Other work has included pinhole photography; Helen turned a car into a pinhole camera and also made images on a moving train. The ‘piano pieces’ developed from an affinity Helen felt between drawing and playing the piano, both to do with a sensitivity of touch.

Helen Barff graduated in 1999 from Fine Art and Art History BA at Goldsmiths College, London. Last year she gained an MA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Art. Helen lives in London, where she regularly exhibits. Her work has also recently been on show as part of the Richard Demarco archive in Edinburgh, the Rabley Contemporary Drawing Centre in Wiltshire and selected for the Oriel Mostyn exhibition in North Wales. Helen also teaches Fine Art and Drawing at various locations in and around London.