Helen Petts
Helen Petts is an artist filmmaker who often works in collaboration with experimental musicians, but also makes very solitary work in remote landscapes. She has worked extensively in Cumbria where she used to live, including a film commission from the 2012 Olympic Games where she followed Kurt Schwitters’ route of exile to Norway and Ambleside. Her films explore rhythm, texture, sound and chance events often in sites with an interesting history. She studied film at Westminster University then, after a career as a film and TV director, she studied Fine Art at Goldsmith’s College. She now shows her films in gallery installation and festivals, and has exhibited in the UK and abroad. Her films are in the British Film Institute artists’ film collection and distributed by Lux Artists Moving Image. Currently making a film about the rare flora in Teesdale, she divides her time between North Yorkshire and London.Helen Petts is an artist filmmaker who often works in collaboration with experimental musicians, but also makes very solitary work in remote landscapes. She has worked extensively in Cumbria where she used to live, including a film commission from the 2012 Olympic Games where she followed Kurt Schwitters’ route of exile to Norway and
© Helen Petts at Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn in 2012
Ambleside. Her films explore rhythm, texture, sound, and chance events, often in sites with an interesting history. She studied film at Westminster University, then, after a career as a film and TV director, she studied Fine Art at Goldsmith’s College. She now shows her films in gallery installations and festivals, and has exhibited in the UK and abroad. Her films are in the British Film Institute artists’ film collection and distributed by Lux Artists Moving Image. Currently making a film about the rare flora in Teesdale, she divides her time between North Yorkshire and London.
Space & Freedom
Originally commissioned by Manchester Art Gallery for the exhibition Speech Acts: Reflection-Imagination-Repetition 25 May 2018 - April 2019, curated by Hammad Nasar.
When Li Yuan-chia left the London art scene in 1967 for an old farmhouse on Hadrian's Wall in Banks, Cumbria, he said he was going in search of 'Space and Freedom’. Here he set up his own gallery and art centre and gave exhibitions to many local and international artists. His own work developed as a response to the rural landscape in which he now lived - expanding into photography, 8mm film, and later video.
Artist filmmaker Helen Petts was permitted by the Li Yuan-chia (LYC) Foundation to explore his film archive and make her own work in response. Editing Li's own footage (including two previously unknown sound recordings of his voice) with her own images and field recordings, adding original improvised music by Steve Beresford - she has explored the landscapes Li Yuan-chia loved around the LYC Museum.
Supported by Arts Council England with financial assistance from the Li Yuan-chia Foundation and Manchester Art Gallery.
© Helen Petts, Space & Freedom 2018
