Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures Symposium

A one-day symposium exploring the life, work and influence of British sculptor, photographer and installation artist Helen Chadwick (1953 -1996).

The conference will draw on, and respond to, our landmark retrospective exhibition and accompanying major publication, and is generously supported by a grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Helen Chadwick was an iconic figure of Britain’s postwar avant-garde, known for her innovative, multidisciplinary practice, pioneering feminist approach, and influence on the ‘Young British Artists’ generation. Despite her significant role in British and international art history, attention to her work declined following her unexpected death in 1996, and she has since been notably underserved in terms of critical and art historical engagement.

The symposium, in concert with our exhibition and publication, aims to correct this. It will chart the full development of Chadwick’s artistic language, as well as her contributions, impact and value to the landscape of British and international art history. With a continued aim to merge art and life, it will bring together a diverse array of speakers and panellists, many of whom knew Chadwick personally, including expert contributors to our publication and significant artists who were influenced by her.

Laura Smith is Director of Collection and Exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield, where she has curated exhibitions of the work of Andrew Cranston (2023) and Sylvia Snowden (2024). She was previously curator at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Tate. At Whitechapel her exhibitions included: ‘Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70’ (2023), ‘Emma Talbot: The Age’ (2022), ‘Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy’ (2021), ‘Simone Fattal: Finding a Way’ (2021) and ‘Helen Cammock: Che si può fare?’ (2019). At Tate she curated exhibitions of Claude Cahun, Barbara Hepworth, Linder, Liliane Lijn, France-Lise McGurn, Lucy Stein and Rebecca Warren, and group shows including ‘Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by her Writings’ and the Turner Prize 2016. Smith writes extensively on modern and contemporary art, recently contributing chapters to Revisiting Modern British Art (2022) and The Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf (2021), as well as monographs on Judith Godwin, Pia Arke, Lisa Brice, Lewis Hammond, Sylvia Snowden and Caragh Thuring.

Philomena Epps is a writer and art historian. She is currently a PhD candidate in the History of Art department at University College London. Focused on work by Rose English, Alina Szapocznikow, and Hannah Wilke, her doctoral research examines the relationship between fetishism and sexual difference across multidisciplinary artistic practice. Epps also writes art criticism and has contributed texts to publications on various artists that include Helen Chadwick, Mona Hatoum, Magali Reus, Nicola L, and Jo Spence.

Maria Christoforidou is an AfroGreek artist, writer and Fine Art lecturer at Falmouth University. Her work moves in different formats – lectures, performances, workshops, poems, film, photography – by listening to the inner body and ‘speaking nearby’ to archives or ancestors. Using fiction, academic research and collaboration as tools, her images and words aim to interrogate archives, gently peeling back legacies of colonialism. Her interest in images and stories that shape diasporic identity brought her to co-curate ‘Surplus Cinemas’, a 3-day film and event programme at Beursschouwburg, Brussels (2022). Her writing has been performed/spoken in different settings including: Theatre Academy, Helsinki; Spike Island, Bristol; Onassis Air, Athens; Trengwainton Gardens, Cornwall and Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen. Writings online include texts for exhibitions by Lucy Stein, Hales Gallery, London (2023); Jessica Warboys, Gaudel de Stampa, Paris (2020), and ‘The Poem Returns as an Echo’, The Contemporary Greek Art Institute, Athens (2024). Her video-poem Maltha: the thrice burnt archives of unreliable prophecies commissioned by transmediale for refusal 20/21, almanac, Berlin, has been shown in Beursschouwburg, Cinematek Brussels, MOOOV Film Festival, I Have A Dream Festival, Athens, and MOCA Skopje.

Louisa Buck is a writer and broadcaster on contemporary art. She is a Contributing Editor and London Contemporary Art Correspondent for The Art Newspaper and a regular reviewer and commentator on BBC radio and TV. She has written catalogue essays for institutions including Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA London, MCA Australia, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Hepworth Wakefield. Her books include Moving Targets 2: A User’s Guide to British Art Now (Tate 2000); Market Matters: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Art Market (Arts Council England 2004); Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector’s Handbook (Cultureshock Media 2006); Commissioning Contemporary Art: A Handbook for Curators, Collectors and Artists ( Thames & Hudson 2012). In 2016 she authored ‘The Going Public Report’ commissioned by Museums Sheffield. Louisa was a judge for the 2005 Turner Prize and is a founding member of The Gallery Climate Coalition.

Lindsey Mendick (b.1987) is a Margate-based artist who works primarily with ceramics, embedding her sculptures within installations that include stained glass, film, furniture, large stage sets and performance. She received a BA from Sheffield Hallam University and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London. Her autobiographical work offers a form of catharsis, encouraging the viewer to explore their own personal history through the revisionist lens of the artist. She was the recipient of the Sky Arts Award in Visual Art in 2024, the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award in 2020, the Alexandra Reinhardt memorial award in 2018 and was selected for Jerwood Survey in 2019 and the Future Generations Art Prize in 2020. Mendick has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Jupiter Artland, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Hayward Gallery, Carl Freedman Gallery, Somerset House, Jeffrey Deitch, Cooke Latham, and Hannah Barry Gallery, among others. In 2025, she presented ‘Wicked Game‘, an ambitious outdoor installation at Kenilworth Castle. With her partner, the artist Guy Oliver, Mendick initiated Quench Gallery in Margate to provide vital support for early career artists through exhibitions and mentoring.