HELEN CHADWICK

To mark the 60th anniversary of the birth of British artist Helen Chadwick (18 May 1953), Richard Saltoun Gallery proudly presents the artist's first solo exhibition for almost ten years.

Helen Chadwick [1953-1996] was one of the most important British artists to emerge in the 1980s, and in 1987, one of the first woman artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize. Chadwick's innovative and provocative use of a rich variety of materials, such as flesh, flowers, chocolate and fur, was hugely influential on a younger generation of British artists. Her strongly associative and visceral images were intended to question gender representation and the nature of desire.

Her influence on the YBA's in particular, as much through her attitude as by her work, was cemented through her teaching posts at the Royal College of Art, Chelsea School of Art and the London Institute.  Her sudden death in 1996 from heart failure stunned the art world and put an end to a prolific artist at the apex of her career.

This exhibition presents a selection of photographs and sculptures from 1982 until 1994, the year of her death, with over 20 works on display. It features a number of key works, including Meat Abstracts (1989), Wreaths of Pleasure (1992-3), Ego Geometria Sum (1982-4) and Piss Flowers (1991-92), among others. Piss Flowers (1991-92) is perhaps one of Chadwick's most recognisable works where she cast the interior spaces left by her partner David Notarius and her, pissing in the snow. The work is both repulsive and beautiful, and it is this combination that typifies Chadwick's work: aesthetic beauty created out of an alliance of unconventional, often vile, materials.