Helen Robertson

Echo
22 June - 27 July 2024

Helen Robertson Film Still from Thoroughfare 2020

Helen Robertson Film Still from Thoroughfare 2020

As a pure voice that refracts another voice. Echo makes the musicality of language sing. 
Adriana Cavarero For More Than One Voice 2005

 

Working with architecture and the choreographic Echo sets in motion a web of relations to women past and present, exploring ideas of agency and authorship as reciprocal and interdependent.

On entering the gallery visitors step into the work becoming part of a choreography that unfolds across a sequence of rooms. Correspondences across filmed architectures and the gallery architecture are inflected by interrelated sculptural and architectural interventions giving rise to chains of iterations that extend conversations across past and present, interior and exterior, here and elsewhere.

Echo brings together 5 films shot on video of or relating to works of architecture in which women have played an important (often unrecognised) role; this includes a film of Laura Martínez de Guereñu’s Re-enactment at the Barcelona Pavilion 2020 (that worked to bring recognition to architect Lilly Reich's design contribution); a choreography made for camera with two ballet dancers that responds to Lilly Reich and Mies van Der Rohe's Velvet and Silk Cafe and a moving image projection of a sculptural work by artist Liz Deschenes (Stereograph #36), which within the exhibition is part of a rumination on architect Lauretta Vinciarelli’s unrecognised work with Donald Judd in Marfa Texas.

A leaflet featuring a commissioned essay by Professor Jane Rendell will be available during the exhibition and on this link.

Click here to view the exhibition as a 3D Virtual Space

Helen Robertson’s work has been shown nationally and internationally including Hayward Gallery London, Stadthaus Ulm Germany, Matt’s Gallery London, Arnolfini Gallery Bristol. Recent exhibitions include Hanging in the Balance Five Years London 2023, The Undersides of Practice APT gallery 2020, Bauhaus: Utopia in Crisis Camberwell Space 2019, Come and go. Halt extreme left. Winchester Gallery, Winchester School of Art 2019, Drift Thames Side Studios Gallery, London 2019. Recent performances include its song a performance with dancer Antoinette Brooks Daw for Architectures in Air Brixton Library 2023, [these roarers] Whitstable Biennale 2018 (in collaboration with Lucy Gunning and Bernice Donszelmann), pine beech pine Architectural Association Hooke Park 2017.

Helen Robertson is supported by Studio Wayne McGregor through the FreeSpace programme, by The Acme Jonathan Harvey Tenant Award in 2024 and Research at Central Saint Martins UAL.

 http://www.helenrobertson.net

Jane Rendell is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she co-initiated and teaches on the MA Situated Practice, and on the MA Architectural History. She supervises history, theory and design PhDs in architecture, art, urbanism and experimental writing.
Rendell’s research, writing and pedagogic practice crosses architecture, art, feminism, history and psychoanalysis. She has introduced concepts of ‘critical spatial practice’ and ‘site-writing’ through her authored books: The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), and The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002). https://www.janerendell.co.uk/

 

Join us for the closing event of Echo on Saturday 7 September at 2pm. A performance, Turn and Return, with dancer Antoinette Brooks-Daw, choreographed by the artist will start promptly at 4pm. For more information please contact danielle@daniellearnaud.com

Please note that on the final week of the exhibition the gallery will be open exceptionally from 11 to 6pm on Thursday 5th and Friday 6th, and from 2 to 6pm on Saturday 7th.

 

 

 

 Indivisible (y)  2019  8:25 min  credit: Serpentine Pavilion 2018 designed by Frida Escobedo
 Chamber  2024  Hand painted silk curtain, wood

 

 

From left to right
Void  2023  Welded steel 86 x 35 x 42 cm
Lucent  2021-4  28:43 min credit: Stereograph 36  2019 by Liz Deschens
Shaft  2024 Tufted carpet 331 x 44cm

 

 

My Fox River House Project  2022/24
Projected video loop 18:06min
Prism  2024 welded steel 80 x 115 x 39 cm

 

 

From left to right
my heart or shall I say one of my hearts is in building
 2022-24 
Projected video loop 12:24  Dancers: Antoinette Brooks-Daw and Genevieve Heron
incurve  2024  Welded steel
passing through  2024
Hand woven mercerised cotton double cloth

 

Sunward  2024
Site specific architectural painting

 

 

Thoroughfare  2020-24
Projected video loop, 15:05 min credit: Re-enactment by Laura Martinez de Guerenu, The Barcelona Pavilion 2020