JANE HELLINGS

I'm Reviewed in the Guardian!

10/7/2019

Clearly I am a very lazy blogger, it being over a year since I last blogged, but it isn't every day, or in fact any day, except today, that I get to say, I am reviewed in the Guardian.
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/03/sneaker-fans-clamour-for-adidas-designers-lace-up-tribute-to-home-town-blackburn
And it couldn't've come at a better time. As a low paid worker, I, like so many of my proletariat sisters and brothers, have been hit hard by Tory austerity and today I was signed up to fairbite, a food club organised by Cambridge City Foodbank. Redcar opened the first such shop and Cambridge City, using a similar model, is only the second of its kind in the country.
Anyway, the mention I get is in a piece about the British Textiles Biennial. My Jane Hellings is a Slag Banner is in an exhibition in Pendle, Lancashire, where I will be at the weekend, with fellow Sew Angry Activists, for a weekend of workshops and events. And where I shall raise a glass, or in my case, a mug of tea, to Slags and Foodbanks everywhere.

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Desperate Artwives and the Art of Clean

6/18/2017

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69 Toys, Dagmara Bilton

In January of this year I was asked by artist curator Amy Digman to join Desperate Artwives,
www.desperateartwives.co.uk/
a collective of accomplished female artists, whose creative practice interrogates their experience of being 'wives' and mothers, and questions social expectations and values, which frame this role.
Perhaps it is because many women's lives are so subsumed in the mess of the body and the home, that women artists have explored the Abject and the domestic (Abramovic, Bourgeois, Chadwick) and these are recurring themes in my own work. I choose to work from home rather than from a dedicated studio space because I value the interaction between the work I make and the stuff of daily living. In keeping with the domestic subject matter of my work, my techniques are low-tech, and my materials of choice are those easily to hand.
For some time I have been producing work about dirt, cleaning and domestic household chores.

Long running project Art of Clean further blurs the line between art and life. I am engaged in cleaning jobs at Cambridge Women's Aid and at student accomodation in Cambridge. Out of this work are developing a number of arts projects. I have worked with women on drawings of clutter, and we are now working on a project about childhood homes. I am also developing with ARU students, a project documenting the personal possesions and clutter in their rooms.

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December 09th, 2016

12/9/2016

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Susan in the House

My dear, dear friend Susan Van Valkenburg left these shores to return home to the US, taking with her, her English husband, their son and a gaggle of pets. I miss her. This is a record of the things that remain of Susan in my home.
As Art of Clean, I occasionally clean the student rooms at Centrepoint, in Cambridge, and am struck by how much the posessions in these empty rooms say about their occupants.
At a time when it behoves us to acquire less 'stuff', the complex relationship between ourselves and our posessions; what they suggest about us to others and how we use them to define ourselves, becomes ever more sharply focused.

www.ozonelouise.com/pmasks.php?pageindex=8
is where to go to find Susan's delightful, quirky work.

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Off the Wall

11/29/2016

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At home I have a poster which says 'Art doesn't have to match the couch', to which I would add 'Art doesn't have to hang on the wall'.
As far back as 1917, Duchamp, with his ready mades (fig 1) began the move away from the wall, and, with this came the blurring of the line between 'life' and 'art'. This appropriation of the utilitarian and the commercial, for artistic purposes, is evident in the artist's shop. Probably the most famous of these is 'The Shop' (fig 2) opened by Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas in 1993. Other examples of this fine art genre include Lucy Sparrow's 'Knitted Corner Shop' 2014 (fig 3) and Rosalie Schweiker's 2013
'Sex Shop' (fig 4)
My own contribution to this genre 'The Feminist Pound Shop' (fig 5) is a natural extention of 'The Penis Emporium' (fig 6) which referenced shopping, but functioned only as an exhibit. As with other artist's shops, 'The Feminist Pound Shop' requires the viewer to complete the meaning of the work. This is a democratising feature of these interactive works, which move away from the convention of artist as creative genius, by placing viewer and artist on the same plain. 'The Feminist Pound Shop' was conceived to challenge commercialism by offering 'feminist tat', thus 'making feminism affordable for all'.

Fig 1. Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917, replica 1964

Fig 2. The Shop, Lucas/Emin 1993

Fig 3. Knitted Corner Shop, Lucy Sparrow, 2014

Fig 4. Sex Shop, Rosalie Schweiker, 2013

Fig 5. Feminist Pound Shop, Jane Hellings, 2016

Fig 6. Penis Emporium, Jane Hellings, 2014

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Irregular Circle

8/3/2016

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I am delighted to have joined the very talented Hilary Moreton and Jane Waterhouse at Irregular Circle. This week we are in residence in the Coach House at Murray Edwards College, being inspired to make new work by the New Hall Collection and the stunning gardens. We are also running three evening drop in workshops; Pimms, Pens and Pencils. Yesterday Jane Waterhouse facilitated mark making, from which marks, emerged, serendipitously, a series of landscapes. Tonight it's drawing with scissors, collecting and composing with me and tomorrow Hilary is taking us, and a line, for a walk around the gardens. 6.30-8.30
www.irregularcircle.com/

Fellows' Lounge

The Coach House

Mountain

St Ives, Cornwall

Hills

Tree

The Sea, The Sea

Snow

Sand Dunes

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Object Object Privet View

7/16/2016

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Privet Ball Jane Waterhouse

arbpublicart.wordpress.com/

Edible Woman Jill Eastland, Ann Templar

Fuck Off Jelly, based on a film by Rachel Wooller

Fanny Cradock's, fun 70s activity for the children

70s Nibbles

You Can't Please Everyone

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Riding off into the Sunset

5/5/2016

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Inevitably the time came for me to leave the caravan of love and return to the real world. No longer 'Jane's Caravan', but' Francesca's Caravan'. Francesca Pfister that is, who is Swiss (allegedly). She has taken up the baton and is running with it, or painting, or sculpting, or cutting out. I recommend a visit to this third Caravanserai resident artist at Cambridge Artworks.
Little Life went out with a bang, with a Private View made fab by animated visitors and live music from Tony Phillips.
Flattering reviews; 'Street of Shame' and 'Blasphemous Filth' nearly, but not quite toppled my favourite review from its top spot; 'Too feminist, too childish, not clever enough'. I shall continue to strive to be all of these things.

Saddle up, we're riding out.

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Five Go Off in a Caravan

4/24/2016

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While I was sunning myself in Manchester, Jill Eastland, Susie Johnson, Alison O'Neill, Sara Paynter and Rachel Wooller all intervened.
Private View, 6-8pm, Friday 29th of April 2016 Artworks, 5 Green's Road, Cambridge, CB4 3EF
Tea, coffee and possibly biscuits will be served.
Bring a bottle.
Live acoustic music, so bring your voice, or another instument, if you fancy joining in.

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Interventions and Invitations

4/15/2016

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For the next few days I am handing over the caravan and Little Life to a number of artists, to interveve in my work, in any way they choose. This will enable the village to develop organically, as the vision of a number of people, unlike modern developments such as Cambourne and Trumpington Meadows.
From 6-8pm on Friday the 29th of April, when my residency in the caravan ends, there will be a private view of Little Life at Cambridge Artworks, 5 Green's Rd, CB4 3EF. Come and see what we've been doing, bring a bottle, I am a poor artist!