Ocula Conversation Sunjung Kim’s Real DMZ Project Interrogates the North and South Korea Divide Ongoing since 2012, the Real DMZ Project interrogates the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea through annual, research-based exhibitions that bring together the works of Korean and international artists. Sunjung Kim, the independent curator behind the project, conceived the idea of exploring the DMZ while curating Japanese artist...
Ocula Report Sydney Lowdown: Exhibitions to See 6 Sep 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The fifth edition of Sydney Contemporary will take place once again at Carriageworks between 12 and 15 September 2019, with Spring 1883 bringing together a cohort of 27 galleries from across Australia and the region to inhabit rooms at the Establishment Hotel from 11 to 14 September 2019, uniquely presenting contemporary works propped up on...
Ocula Insight | Video Mark Bradford’s Call for Unity at Shanghai’s Long Museum 16 August 2019 Mark Bradford walks through Mark Bradford: Los Angeles Mark Bradford: Los Angeles at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai (27 July–13 October 2019) is the artist's largest solo exhibition to date in China. In this video for Ocula, Bradford and Diana Nawi, curator of the show, walk through selected works that convey the artist's concerns with...
Born in Birmingham, England in 1971, Helen Beard is an artist who works in various disciplines including paint, collage, tapestries and sculptures.
Beard’s paintings use a vivid rainbow palette to create interlocking arrangements of bright primary colour, which combine to describe explicit sexual encounters. Working from found images, Beard’s work explores themes relating to gender, sexual psychology and eroticism. Situated part way between abstraction and representation, her figures are reduced to concisely defined fields of vibrant colour, on which a myriad of varied brush marks remain visible. As a feminist, she is unapologetic for female desire and takes back ownership of sexual imagery from the predominantly male gaze. The work is, at heart, a celebration of the life affirming nature of sex.
In 2017 she was included in the group show Simulation Skin: Selected works from the Murderme Collection and in the Spring of 2018, Beard was included in True Colours, a show of new works by three women artists at Newport Street Gallery, London. Beard’s work was also included in the show 21st Century Women curated by Jane Neal and Fru Tholstrup last Autumn in London.
Her work is in included in major collections worldwide.
She lives and works in Brighton, England.
