Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

Love and sorrows come in equal parts

The images below show the an in-situ performance modelling at the exhibition: “LOOK LESS, FEEL MORE – creating the exhibition as we go, doing is the show”, Hockney Gallery, London, January 2012.

I always have a reference to the classical sculpture in the back of my head when working with body related themes. However, I'm mostly interested in making the content somehow present and tell the stories about loss of love and life. I try to capture in these sculptures - what are not there anymore – dealing with longiness after the sweet, safe and secure and a desire to be healed. But longing for restoration is an unsafe and unstable place to be, as it may not happen.

"I find it intriguing to play with the border between the private and personal – playing with what should be told and what shouldn’t".

Sublime: If the sublime is seen as the noble, the splendid and the terrifying. I find that art, love and life are exactly that – a suspense between triumph and tragedy.

Concept: I wish to merge the notion of longing for consolation and heeling with the process of making the object and the actual appearance of the object.

In the making, I try to transfer emotions into clay - not only using the hands, but my body to form stroke and caress the clay and build the sculptures in the very intimate sphere of my own body. This gives the sculpture the heavy and soft feeling of flesh from something living and at the same time it holds the slightly clichéd reminiscence of a heart shape.

In this work, the clay is used as a substitute - filling up the void of which I rather would have reserved for human touch and contact.