HELEN BEARD – LYRICAL LINES
2021-03-31Four new prints by Helen Beard, available to buy online from 10:00am GMT Wednesday 31st March, 2021.
“I used to hate my work being referred to as pornographic, and also I used to hate it being referred to as erotic. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. But I did read Audre Lorde’s essay about the power of the erotic recently, and actually, I think I’m much more comfortable with the term ‘erotic’ now, and I don’t mind that label. Because she talks about it being a lifeforce of creativity, eroticism is that, and a female lifeforce. You know, it’s what creates us all, there isn’t anything more important.”
“I knew that I wanted to make a painting with a clitoris shape. Nobody knew it was that shape until really recently, I just couldn’t believe that we wouldn’t know that. I guess doctors didn’t study female anatomy, it was unimportant in a patriarchal system. It’s a lovely shape and it’s really graphic, and the minute I saw it, it made me think of those Matisse works. I wanted to make each one slightly different because all women are different. So they couldn’t be the same but I wanted to keep them as simple shapes, like Matisse’s cut outs and I did do them as cut outs to start with. The titles of my works are really important and I was making an awful lot of paintings, so it felt factory-like, and I was thinking about Warhol and The Factory and listening to that Gang of Four song ‘It’s Her Factory’ and then it just sort of seemed really relevant. It was significant that it was my factory, that it’s a woman’s.”
Helen Beard
Opposite – It’s Her Factory, 2021
The prints will be on display in the gallery from Monday 12th April, 2021
Paul Stolper
31 Museum Street
London
WC1A 1LH
