Helen Carr

Helen collages together her ‘modern archaeological’ finds to create humorous, but surreal and unsettling objects. Using everyday puns and phrases to instigate some of the work, she celebrates the precarious, overlooked and disregarded. Her ‘handle plants’ use the iconic ceramic object as an accent and attitude; defiant in their ‘hands-on-hips’ form, but so familiar as to become almost invisible. So too, the discarded chicken bones from the ubiquitous British fried chicken shop. Chicken bones can survive indefinitely (unless your dog eats them) and their remains provide witness to a working class history, similar to the oyster shells that were thrown into the river Thames by the Georgian and Victorian dock workers.

Helen uses flowing lead glazes inspired by the 18^thcentury ceramicist Thomas Whieldon, adding a sense of anthropomorphic animation to her objects.