To whom it may concern.
AND ‘eventSpace’, in collaboration with the Royal College of Art Society, were pleased to include work by Helena Hartmann in an exhibition which took place during the summer 2015 “Convergence – Thinking and Doing” .
This is a review of her installation and performance.
Helena Hartmann: Installations and performance.
Helena’s work is mesmerising and intriguing. She delves into complex and difficult human experience and confronts demons head on. The ‘private’ is placed into full public glare. Her use of stark video documentaries were cut and sculpted into complex anthems creating a multi-dimensional tension between viewer and subject – the viewer is coerced to experience a dualistic role between self reflection and voyeur.
Her performance works straddled multi dimensional space – from the use of a contrived environment in which the performance occurs on documentary film watched by a virtual audience or by direct engagement, as a performer, with a live audience locating her body and voice into a space.
Helena’s control in transferring each work into different places was impressive. I saw “Dembe and Mistaken Series” at three contrasting locations, confined rooms at the Royal College of Art, AND ‘eventSpace’ and in a cabin aboard HQS Wellington moored on the River Thames. Each time the projection pieces took on different shades of tension and lightness.
At AND ‘eventSpace’ in London she presented three works. “Dembe and Mistaken Series”, which ran for several days, was a projected video located in a dark industrial and desolate ‘arched space’. Viewers discovered the space and were able to observe the video projection from 15 metre distance and in privacy. Her other work was a performance using contraptions which deformed her movement and disguised her body and face. Her journey amongst the audience and free use of her voice singing traditional nursery rhymes and children’s songs was in complete contrast to constrained physicality from which she gradually freed herself – a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. All her works emphasised a sense of struggle and the freedom gained through physical challenge or the power of confession.
Jenni Boswell-Jones MDes (RCA)
(Dir: AND Association) Curator • ‘eventSpace1’
AND ‘eventSpace’, in collaboration with the Royal College of Art Society, were pleased to include work by Helena Hartmann in an exhibition which took place during the summer 2015 “Convergence – Thinking and Doing” .
This is a review of her installation and performance.
Helena Hartmann: Installations and performance.
Helena’s work is mesmerising and intriguing. She delves into complex and difficult human experience and confronts demons head on. The ‘private’ is placed into full public glare. Her use of stark video documentaries were cut and sculpted into complex anthems creating a multi-dimensional tension between viewer and subject – the viewer is coerced to experience a dualistic role between self reflection and voyeur.
Her performance works straddled multi dimensional space – from the use of a contrived environment in which the performance occurs on documentary film watched by a virtual audience or by direct engagement, as a performer, with a live audience locating her body and voice into a space.
Helena’s control in transferring each work into different places was impressive. I saw “Dembe and Mistaken Series” at three contrasting locations, confined rooms at the Royal College of Art, AND ‘eventSpace’ and in a cabin aboard HQS Wellington moored on the River Thames. Each time the projection pieces took on different shades of tension and lightness.
At AND ‘eventSpace’ in London she presented three works. “Dembe and Mistaken Series”, which ran for several days, was a projected video located in a dark industrial and desolate ‘arched space’. Viewers discovered the space and were able to observe the video projection from 15 metre distance and in privacy. Her other work was a performance using contraptions which deformed her movement and disguised her body and face. Her journey amongst the audience and free use of her voice singing traditional nursery rhymes and children’s songs was in complete contrast to constrained physicality from which she gradually freed herself – a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. All her works emphasised a sense of struggle and the freedom gained through physical challenge or the power of confession.
Jenni Boswell-Jones MDes (RCA)
(Dir: AND Association) Curator • ‘eventSpace1’