ABOUT
Helen Gilbart is a UK visual artist with particular interests in time and memory in the land, physical geography, archaeology, land histories, horticulture. She has been based in coastal Suffolk for over 30 years. Gilbart studied Geography with Art and the Environment at the University of Lancaster, Fine Art as a Postgraduate at Central St. Martins (Printmaking) & Cyprus School of Art. As a maker, she also studied Bronze Foundry Practice at London Metropolitan University.
Gilbart’s practice has always focused on the intersection between direct physical experience of her subject – observing & exploring it intently, and its hidden human archive. These interests won her awards and residencies to work extensively in the field in Spain, Cyprus, as Artist in Residence in the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Cambridge, at the fossil beds the UNESCO Burgess Shale in the Rockies in Canada and with the British Museum at archaeology sites in Happisburgh, Norfolk.
Other projects include Into the Holloway, a Walk at Dusk; a long, linear work conceived & experienced as a walk, consisting of 325 paintings grouped in sequences. Documented also as a film, its’ themes excavate memory & the histories of place. These themes were explored further in Conversations – three following projects.
More recently Gilbart completed Book of Hours I & II – a Lockdown meditation forming two art books of nearly 800 small painted images on playing cards. An in-depth microsite & collaborative film by Emily Richardson were also made. Book of Hours & associated work will be exhibited as part of the forthcoming Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival 2025, when Gilbart is Artist in Residence.