Celebrating Worldwide Ladies’s Day 2025

GraffitiStreet

Your work fantastically delves into the intricacies of identification and the human expertise. I perceive you’ve got lately transitioned to portray impressed by private experiences. Might you share extra about this shift in your artistic course of?

Helen Bur

I believe it was most likely round 2018/19 that I solely returned to taking, creating and utilizing my very own photos because the reference for portray. Earlier than then there was a interval the place discovered imagery shaped the vast majority of my references. It’s humorous as a result of throughout artwork school, I used to be obsessive with a digital camera, creating countless picture diaries of my life and portray from these photos. After which throughout college I moved away from it.

I believe the timeline suits with a type of maturity or evolution of how I used to be digesting the world; firstly from these closest to me in these adolescent, identification forming years; then a departure away from that, a type of empirical statement of the larger image, politics and experiences exterior my very own; after which a ‘full circle’ again to my very own lived expertise however encoded maybe with a extra refined hope of the actual turning into common.

Possibly too, the boldness of age telling me my very own expertise is legitimate sufficient to make use of and a realisation that some tales will not be mine to inform.

There’s a quote by David Hockney that sums it up fairly properly; “I don’t exit and see as a lot as I used to. I don’t fairly really feel the necessity for it. I’ve to work issues out for myself because it had been. If you’re very younger , you want to be in the midst of lots of exercise as a result of it’s stimulating to you. You’re including to it and taking out of it however there’s a degree in life the place you don’t want that crowd to do it. You’ve got sufficient in your head to kind out.”

Helen Bur – Rotor VI (2024)

GraffitiStreet

You select to make use of a brush on your giant murals, setting you other than the everyday spray paint method present in road artwork. How do you navigate the challenges of portray such expansive works? Additionally, would you stroll us by your course of for planning and executing a mural from begin to end?

Helen Bur

I used to make use of a little bit of each however in the end, I’d all the time used brush on canvas in order that was the pure development. I get lots of pleasure from mixing my very own colors and the messy carnage of a cherry picker lined in buckets of paint and a make-shift pallette.

The navigation of scale is a humorous one; it takes me roughly the identical period of time to create a canvas because it does a wall, there’s simply an upscaling of supplies. It takes somewhat longer to change issues on a mural so in the end there’s much less construct up of layers, much less free gesture or unintended marks.

The strategy planning stage varies relying on the challenge. Usually the ‘sketch’ is only a photographic reference made to suit the form of the wall, generally I’ll work from a portray already made on canvas, which is less complicated as lots of the determining has already occurred!

GraffitiStreet

The round motif seems continuously in your work. What private significance does this form maintain for you / signify?

Helen Bur

The attraction of the circle for me was its absolute non-committal to at least one that means, which had all the time been a tough wire by my work.

It’s wholeness, unity, totality, eternity, but additionally repetition, constriction, stagnation. It has this polarity which means it will possibly change a picture’s narrative considerably relying on how the determine is interacting with it.

It’s additionally interesting in its utter universality and abundance as an emblem throughout cultures and histories.

GraffitiStreet

Your smaller installations usually function native figures seen from behind, suggesting motion or departure. What impressed you to undertake this distinctive perspective, and what feelings or ideas do you hope to evoke in your viewers?

Helen Bur

Once more, this can be a type of nod to the trope of the Rückenfigur, an aesthetic with a protracted historical past by the humanities. And once more, it’s this play between the private and the common; as beautiful as it’s to attach and depict an area particular person, and not using a face, it additionally leaves house for a extra common resonance.

Making a portrait of somebody by portray their face can someday really feel like a stark and invasive act, having to depict character by the subtleties of gait is gentler and permits some anonymity which seems like a uncommon luxurious these days.

GraffitiStreet

How is your latest transfer to Cornwall and the renovation of your house influencing your creative apply? Additionally, how do you steadiness studio work with road artwork?

Helen Bur

It’s been a whirl-wind few years in all honesty! I moved to Cornwall from London on the finish of 2021, constructed a studio, came upon I used to be pregnant, did a solo present in Madrid and welcomed my daughter in 2022, travelled for lots of 2023 for murals and made one other solo present in Denmark for 2024 then took a ten month hiatus from portray to construct a home from scratch with my companion and I’m nearly to get again into the studio!

The pull of motherhood and housebuilding have redefined my apply massively and I nonetheless really feel like I’m navigating the steadiness. There’s much more construction in my life now that’s meant I’ve to compartmentalise every side to be extra organised and centered. However dwelling away from town and placing down roots on a farm has given me a slower extra contemplative existence with a deeper connection to the land which permits more room for inner explorations. I’m hoping the following yr or so goes to be a artistic unpacking of this circumstance.

GraffitiStreet

I am notably intrigued by your “On a regular basis Portray” challenge. Are you able to inform us extra about it and what impressed this initiative? Are you continue to capable of paint day by day regardless of your renovation and different commitments?

Helen Bur

The every day paints was first a collection created between 2017-18 the place I labored on these humorous little 7cm x 7cm canvases, producing one day by day for the very best a part of the yr. It was a strategy to try to course of and have interaction with the ever-expanding, ever-scrolling bombardment of images within the media and likewise a software to suppose much less / paint extra, experiment with approach and get much less treasured.

They grew to become a type of sketch e book diary / meditation. I bought again to it once more final yr for a interval and nonetheless have a stack of small panels ready for me. I believe it will likely be one thing I return to when-ever it’s wanted, like stretch.

GraffitiStreet

Your canvas portray type contains conventional strategies like oil and watercolour. What initially drew you to those mediums, and the way do they enrich your storytelling?

Helen Bur

I really like the truth that once you use oil paint you’re connecting to this lovely huge and wealthy historical past of artwork. It’s so closely coded, intoxicating and enduring as a medium. I’ve tried acrylic however it simply doesn’t really feel proper to color with plastic.

I’d prefer to experiment with making my very own egg tempera with chickens from the farm, as this additionally faucets right into a wealthy historical past of artwork in addition to connecting it on to the place that it’s made.

Possibly I’m an outdated soul, however I simply really feel extra enlivened by these enduring conventional mediums.

GraffitiStreet

How do you view the connection between artwork and activism, notably within the context of your individual work?

Helen Bur

I believe at its core, visible language is essentially the most common factor we’ve got, so if activism’s roll is to unite folks, then arts energy to do that is big.

I’m going by battles with myself on generally feeling the work I do is frivolous and previously usually made the selection to be current on the protest somewhat than the studio. It may be so tough figuring out how and the place to indicate up within the face of a lot widespread injustice, however ultimately, you need to be sturdy sufficient standing by yourself to elevate anybody else up. So in these moments of energy, you need to use it.

I don’t essentially see the work I make now as straight within the bounds of activism, however somewhat a quiet poetic narrative on the struggles and joys all of us endure and digest every day.

GraffitiStreet

In your studio work for the GraffitiStreet X: A DECADE exhibition, you combine the suffragette image—the sash—into your items. This image serves as a strong visible echo of the persevering with battle for equality. How do you consider it resonates as we speak, particularly amidst the continued battle for gender equality?

Helen Bur

I believe these work themselves had been a type of questioning of how related the sash is as an emblem for gender equality as we speak. The suffragette motion itself was riddled with colonialism and racism, so once we have a good time their wins for feminism, we additionally need to recognise their downfalls.

The transfer in the direction of intersectional feminism is so very important in understanding nuanced types of discrimination however I believe there’s nonetheless recognition as a result of sacrifices of these early ladies’s actions. So I assume with these Sash work I needed to discover that discomfort.

Helen Bur – Sash II (2022)

Helen Bur – Sash I (2022)

You could find the ‘Sash I and Sash II’ artworks by Helen Bur, which honour the suffragette motion, both in our new GraffitiStreet gallery or on-line right here.

GraffitiStreet

With projections for gender equality extending to 2158, how do you consider artists can catalyse this variation and lift consciousness round ladies’s points? What impression do you hope your art work, notably these depicting themes like breastfeeding, may have on viewers’ perceptions of ladies’s rights and equality?

Helen Bur

Social change is a traditionally and painfully gradual course of isn’t it. I believe the catalysts can solely occur by sheer endurance, taking on as a lot house as doable and sharing our experiences, our oppression is structural and the mandatory treatment is collective.

‘Radical feminist expression is a making seen of what we’ve got been informed to cowl up, to right, to make smaller’ I’ve borrowed this phrasing from an sensible e book I’m studying in the meanwhile referred to as Artwork Monsters by Lauren Elkin which appears at ladies’s complicated historical past of creation, how the concept of ‘ladies as artist’ has usually been thought of monstrous, a egocentric act that pulls us away from our ‘roles’. Traditionally we’ve needed to be loud and offended to even get a foot within the door of the institutes of artwork, to redefine our personal our bodies from objects of artwork to makers of artwork. Our work as feminine artists now continues to be inevitably extra politically charged; whether or not they need it to be or not, for ladies, the private is political. However I believe there’s now an attention-grabbing house we are able to occupy the place we’re being given extra platforms to fill.

With photos that discover themes like breast-feeding I needed to consider we shouldn’t be afraid to fill these platforms with the delicate and tender elements of femininity if we wish to. In fact, as exemplified by your projection for gender equality, there’s nonetheless lots of work to be carried out. In elevating consciousness of the realities of points like breast-feeding alongside the huge expanse of free or undervalued labour that’s nonetheless usually predominantly a girl’s work.

Helen Bur, Nuart Competition, Aberdeen

GraffitiStreet

As we purpose to speed up motion for gender fairness this Worldwide Ladies’s Day, what message do you want to talk by your artwork, not simply as we speak, however year-round?

Helen Bur

In someways, the medium is the same as the message, if younger women and girls can see different ladies engaged on cherry pickers, portray murals on the street that speak about points which will have an effect on their lives, then they’re an increasing number of prone to really feel they will occupy that house too.

To be mirrored is to be empowered.

GraffitiStreet

Trying ahead to 2025, are there any particular mural tasks on the horizon that we will be enthusiastic about?

Helen Bur

I all the time jinx it the minute I begin speaking about tasks within the pipe line, the character of the work is extraordinarily precarious! However I hope to work with the Partitions of Imaginative and prescient Undertaking in Germany this yr to re-envision a portray by Georg Friedrich Kersting, hopefully involving and elevating some native ladies and it’s additionally on a fortress!

However I’ll hold the remainder quiet for now 😉