Helen Chadwick

In 1986 the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London showed a new commission by the artist Helen Chadwick (1954–1996). The installation interwove some of Chadwick’s characteristic motifs – the female body (her own), the aesthetics of pleasure, the material variety and wonder of natural phenomena – and approached them in a spirit of provocative, radical and lavish flamboyance.

In this illustrated volume, Marina Warner examines The Oval Court, one part of the diptych showed at the ICA in 1986. This complex work was erotic, playful, and fierce; it showed imaginative ambition on an exceptional scale and a unique, piquant sensibility, both raunchy and delicate.