Enfleshings

The subject of Helen Chadwick's work is herself. The book forms a cumulative, evolving portrait of a British artist through a diversity of media, including sculpture, the photocopier, light projections, computer and the microscope. In 1987 she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Beginning with a series of photo-sculptures, she depicts her growth from the incubator to adulthood. In an enterprise called "Of Mutability", she has suspended her own image in a sea of organic form and decay. In a series of light projections she places herself close to her mother and against the backdrop of the city and the State in an attempt to discover the core of her cultural heritage. Finally, in her "Viral Landscapes" she derives her imagery from her own cellular structure. With the computer she mixes her internal landscape with images of the natural coastline with a view that is simultaneously microscopic and macroscopic.