Helle Kingbird Bjerregaard

Let me sleep, let me boil..

In the morning a new day starts, it is about poetry.

You were the first one of the day
You were the last one of the night

SHOW 13, The piece I am showing:

The title 'Let me sleep! Let me boil, On the altars of Solomon; Let me soak the rusty soil' 2013 is from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, the piece is a composition of performance, sculpture, clay, hides, wood, tools, light and human. Dimensions 4 x 5 m, Duration: 12 days.

The piece I am making for the SHOW 13, is an affair with both 'weightiness' and sculptural qualities in a ritual handling of the material, and the vitality of performance. Bringing out the better of these two processes, I am persuading them to tell stories and reveal what is buried in their matter, as well as in mine.

The installation consist of a compositions with two floor based platforms, one referencing a table/alter, the other one a bed/grave. The bed is for resting and table is for consuming

The table top it is made of leather. Clay elements will be sculpted on the skin of my body and then laid to rest on a bed or table of skin. Lamp shades will be hanging from the ceiling, transporting the activity into the homely sphere of a private space.

On the bed and table platforms an enduring process creating sculptures of clay will take place throughout the show. Using my whole body as a sight for producing sculptures, a confrontation between the clay and the artist’s body is taking place, blurring the boundary amongst the artists’ endpoint and the beginning of the sculpture.

The clay will change shape, colour, character, returning all back to the starting point, for then starting all over again: revisiting the act that happened the day before, rearranging the elements of the sculpture. Cutting them open, so they blossom in complete transformation, revealing an inside, traces of its origin is to be found.

Dough up from the ground, using clay in this work, has the sense of a folk melody or story, opposite of shining in novelty, it seem to have existed there all along. The energy of the soil, that with softness record and absorb every act it is put through, every little stroke and every brute force.

Artist statement

When I wake up in the morning

I am in the most poetic way sure that my work is about love and softness, during the day this changes, entering the night I am certain it is about sex and death.

Also being a philosopher with a background in the harsh Nordic melancholic and strict minimalistic, yet spiritual and mythical culture, in my works I always seems to be drawn to the core of life’s existence in itself.

Imagining nothing is ever lost, nonetheless everything is always moving, most likely to return at some point if we allow it. All the stories of the world is surprisingly alike, also on top of ruins something flourishes and there will be fostered.

Moving through the effort of creating, for then leaving it and letting it go by giving, not claiming ownership or requesting anything in return, history and myth can be opened up, letting past experiences replay themselves, placing us in this present layer of time, linking everything that have ever been and everything that will ever come.

No one should dream of turning into dust, but after all we are all visitors to this time, to this place. We are just passing through. We can observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we will return.

Upoming exhibition: SHOW 13, Degree Show at Royal College of Art

SHOW 13

Show RCA Battersea

Open to the public: 20–30 June (closed 28 June)

12 noon – 8pm daily

Free admission

Dyson Building, 1 Hester Road, London SW11 4AN
Sculpture Building, 15–25 Howie Street, London SW11 4AS
Sackler Building, 14–22 Howie Street, London SW11 4AY
Moving Image Studio, 1–11 Howie Street, London SW11 4AS
Testbed 1, 33 Parkgate Road, London SW11 4NP

Students from Ceramics & Glass, and Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery will exhibit in the gallery of the College’s recently opened Dyson building in Battersea, as part of Show RCA Battersea. They will feature alongside the Fine Art programmes of Painting, Photography, Printmaking and Sculpture. The College will make use of the neighbouring Testbed 1 space again this year to exhibit Architecture students’ work. Critical Writing in Art & Design and Curating Contemporary Art programmes' exhibits will include opportunities for commentaries and discussion spaces.

Show RCA Kensington

Open to the public: 20–30 June (closed 28 June)

12 noon – 8pm daily

Free admission

Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU

Show RCA Kensington will include students from the programmes of Critical & Historical Studies, Design Products, Design Interactions, Fashion Millinery, Footwear & Accessories, History of Design, Innovation Design Engineering, Textiles and Vehicle Design, who will all exhibit in the Darwin Building. Students from Animation and Visual Communication will take over the adjacent Stevens Building, using the studios to display and sell their work.

more info here

HMS Illustrious

The story about unicorns, narwhales and how I due to a misunderstanding, by helicopter ended up on an aircraft carrier.

Is a long and complicated story and I promise to tell it all, when the work is finish and maybe even before, but until then here is just a few pictures of HMS illustrious. Me, I'm safely back in London.

Deutsche Bank Award 2013

I have been shortlisted for the Deutsche Bank Award 2013.

kingBIRD: Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes

The sculptural-based part of 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes'

In this part of the work 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes', I showed elements from the performative act in a gallery space, Great Western Studios, London, 2012

The buckets:

In the performance, I used some special customised buckets, specially made for the purpose of being used in a performance. Modelling clay on my body, taking the exact imprint of the shape of the gap that occurs between my thighs while working with the clay during the performance. The form of these buckets serves both an aesthetic and functional purpose to strengthen the link between the artist's movements of the body and the performance and the act as a ritual.

The outfit:

I showed the outfit I was wearing in the performance, the outfit almost took on a skin like appearance in the areas where the traces and layers of clay laid thick and accumulated.

The book:

The book showed images from the performance and small text fragments, some my own statements of the intention in the performance, some quotes from others who frames the intention of my project. The book is made without any constituted end or beginning. But in and endless spiral circle so it in it format mimic one of the most important contents of the performance; return and revisit in an endless cycle. Another inspiration for the shape of the book was the notion about the third meaning; known from cinema, where we automatically make connections between images. If we see a man looking out the doorway in one frame and the moon in the next frame, we instantly assume he is looking at the moon, though we have actually never been told. So the pages was divided horizontally, so the bottom and top pages can be flipped independently of each other so endless combinations of images and text can be shown next to each other, making up different meanings.

Both the buckets and the book are examples of how things can change appearance constituted on their context. The traces coming from the performative process are meant to live on after the event; maybe as objects, however significantly more important as seeds planted in our awareness of how we approach the practises of our life.

kingBIRD: Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes

'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes'

The performance:

Believing nothing is never lost: by letting the clay change its form and shape continually it is mimicking how life is always moving, - even on top of ruins something will grow. It is also about the journey by building on top of something already there, I believe nothing is ever lost. It will always return at some point if we allow it.

Part I:

In the performance 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes' shown in Camden Arts Centre, London on the third weekend of November 2012. The first session started out on a clean white space, with a reference to the dream the performance was acted on an enormous duvet. An inkblot pattern referencing 'something beyond consciousness' marked out where the sculpture was to be built.

A confrontation between the clay and the outside of the artist’s body was taking place, with the intention to make visible objects of the red clay and in the end returning it all back to the colour white, the colour of the starting point, covering the entire sculpture in liquid porcelain.

Part II:

The second session started revisiting the act that happened the day before, by rearranging the elements of the sculpture. Cutting them open, they blossomed in complete transformation, revealing the inside where the signs of both the sculpture’s and the performance’s origin was to be traced.

Drawings:
As I told in another post, Sophie was drawing her interpretation of the perfomance. The drawings is going to have their own post as soon as possible.

kingBIRD: Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes, Camden Arts Centre

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Performance by Helle Bjerregaard

(drop-in event, no booking required)

Part I: Saturday 17th November 2012, 2.00 - 3.30pm

Part II: Sunday 18th November 2012, 2.00 - 3.00pm
Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG

Helle Bjerregaard will be performing in the residency studio using raw clay and the body to explore narratives of the material, making process and residual objects.
_________________________

I am preparing for a performance in Camden Arts Centre.The image above is not the Residency Studio, but one of the galleries. The residency studio looks the same, just a bit smaller. The performance is in connection to Phoebe Cummings residency there. She is an artist often working with site-specific installations/sculptures in unfired clay. I have been admiring her works for quite a while, so when she asked me if I wanted to perform, I was naturally thrilled (I still am). So you are hereby invited to come and have a look, I'll be happy to see all of you :-)

While I was preparing, I met the amazing Sophie Westerlind (see her works here) at the Royal College of Art, (during a workshop about Zoo's, which is a story I'll get back to later). Her drawings made a big impact on me. She showed some drawings she had previously done of some performances. Keeping something from the performances is important to me, but I often find it difficult. Drawing could be an interesting approach. Photos are great, but however 'objective' they seem, they are still an interpretation of reality, but in a drawing this interpretation is even further extended.

In my performance, I am treating a topic with artistic decisions, leaving out some things to draw the focus upon others. From my interpretation, her drawings naturally makes yet an interpretation of my interpretation, adding another layer to my performance by reducing it down to its core choosing; what her eye finds essential. Ohh it is going to be exciting to see what will come from that. I’ll write what the performance is about in another post :-)

A snap shot from behind the scene of the preparation taken by Yiru Wang.

kingBIRD: Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes

With the background in the story of Faust

The origin of the work 'Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes' I'm going to show in Camden Arts Centre, London, 2012, derives from an enactment of a scene in Goethe's Faust. Though the work has moved on from where it started with an interpretation of emotions into clay.

The emotions by which the girl Gretchen - despite Faust being responsible for her death - forgives him so he can go to heaven and thereby saves his soul from the devil.

For those of you who aren't totally familiar with Goethe's Faust, the short story is: Faust is a learned scholar that feels that none of his many achievements has provided him with the satisfaction of fulfillment. In his yearning to gain knowledge of the meaning of existence Faust makes a pact with Mephistopheles the devil. He agrees to serve Mephistopheles in hell if he can give him one moment of experience which is so rewarding that he calls upon that moment to stay as it is forever. Faust attempts to find happiness through emotional involvement. He seduces the innocent and young Gretchen and destroys her destiny in their tragic love affair that ends with Faust being responsible for her death. Later he tries to satisfy his craving through temporal accomplishments and exposure to all that the world can offer, but none of these things gives him lasting peace of mind.

After a long and complicated course of events Faust do experience a moment of sheer bliss and Mephistopheles believes Faust has lost his wager and tries to claim his soul. Angels appear and catches Faust's soul before Mephistopheles will bring it to hell. Gretchen appears in the form of the Eternal Feminine, despite Faust caused her death she offers to lead Faust into heaven and saves him with her pleading for God's grace. This grace is truly gratuitous and does not condone Faust's former sins. This grace is only occurring because of Gretchen's forgiveness and his unending striving after goodness and resolution to believe in the existence of something higher than himself.

See all the images here

My works are often based on layers and layers of meaning, thoughts and references.

That being the rule, it is important not to over complicate things. These layers are a platform and then I try to forget it all again to get the instinctive and present energy that makes it come to live.

Some of my thoughts from this session was (in list and bullet form): 'Inside out' : Reversed portrait, or imprints of the outside space of the body : Symbolic marking of the heart : Building the thing, from my body, lay it in a symmetrical pattern inspired from bilateral symmetry of our body : Symbolic making of the heart and to give it to the clay creature : Go through the hazard of making and then turn your back on it and leaving it/let it go : giving, but not claiming ownership or wanting anything in return.

Faust: The setting in this session is chosen to give a 'blank canvas' to work on. The objects making up the final formation/sculpture/installation are all sculpted on my body.

White walls and duvet: contradiction: Soft and caring atmosphere. The cold institution walls are counterbalanced by the soft floor. In the centre of the room is something that could be a bed or a stage.

The white dress: the eternal feminine, the sacrifices (or willing-ness to give) is visible by the symbolic sacrifices/ruin of the clean and crisp surface. It is easy to trace that something has been going on. Classical antique reference.

The red clay: symbolises emotions, flesh, things can rip our chest open, but also for instance emotions like forgiveness is powerful. There is also a reference to some level of general spirituality: reference to the origin of man, woman. Nature people, Indians, Vikings, before civilisation.

Desire: "is a machine, and the object of desire is another machine connected to it.” “Making love is not just becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand…we always make love with worlds”. (Deleuze) & Eros: as a power of creation, will, life-energy, love, desire. (Marcuse, Herbert: Eros and Civilization).

Forgiveness: If the world just would forgive more… what do we gain by seeing other people as enemies.. beside enemies? It is said that; holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.