Helle Helsner’s work is akin to a pagan ritual. She mines and casts her bronze using pre-historic techniques that produce sculptures that could date from any moment in the last 3,000 years. (The figures) seem to shift our focus away from the human and back to the elemental forces from which we and these artworks are made. - Manchán Magan
O’Connell Gallery is delighted to present CORE, a new body of work composed of hand-cast bronze sculptures and drawings by West Cork based, Danish born artist Helle Helsner.
With a foundation in ancient methods and materiality, her work is a continued exploration of intuitive material understanding successfully integrating bronze casting traditions dating back to the bronze age with a contemporary practice that continuously expands and challenges the lines between fine art and traditional craft.
Her work is inspired by the Irish Landscape with a particular interest in the disused copper mining landscape of Allihies on the Beara Peninsula – digging deep into the land, the culture, and the social politics of Ireland.
Her drawings are usually a prelude to the sculptural work but also works of art in their own right. Drawing is how she makes sense of the world and how she disseminates the information of a particular landscape and her understanding of it. She uses the term "deep-mapping" in her work as a form of visual cartography that goes beyond mere landmarks and geology - mapping that encompasses everything physical and non-physical, human and non-human, visible and invisible.
The disused copper mining landscape of Allihies on the Beara Peninsula is the current subject matter of both drawing and sculptural work. From the ruins of the mountain mine engine house to the nests of the choughs on the cliff side overhanging the mine shaft - the people, industry and the social history of the place past and present are all represented through lines, colours and impressions resulting in a visual interpretation and documentation of the land in the works.