Friends for 25 years host art exhibition at Cork gallery

FRIENDS for more than 25 years, artists Debbie Dawson and Helle Helsner are exhibiting together at the Lavit Gallery, in Cork city, inspired by their engagement with particular landscapes.

For Debbie, best known as a glass artist, painting is something she has gone back to in recent times. For the joint exhibition, entitled Desire Lines, Debbie has gone back to childhood memories which were a way in to the landscape of her imagination.

When her mother received a terminal diagnosis of cancer, Debbie and her five siblings all came home to the family house in Glanmire to be with her. She died in March, 2021.

“Obviously, it was a very sad time but it was also quite an enriching magical experience for me,” says Debbie.

“I spent a lot of time with my siblings. We walked around the locale. I got to know the area where I grew up. We went to all our childhood haunts. It was a remote area that we explored a lot as kids, getting lost in our imagination, having the most fantastic games. That whole childhood experience was a really special time for me.”

After their mother died, Debbie and her siblings cleared up the house. Debbie found a lot of photographs taken when she was a child.

“They were triggers that I used. I also took photos of the house.”

INSPIRATION

For the exhibition, Debbie imbued the photographs with her memory and imagination, recalling games played when she was a child.

“There are layers to the paintings, based on the photographs,” she said.

She has researched themes of landscape as metaphor, using photographic research and autobiographical references and memory to allow for the creation of imaginary worlds.

Debbie avoids the often generic representation of pastoral scenes. She has a unique take on the landscape of her childhood and creates fantasy lands and Utopian panoramas using green, pink and grey oil paint, with some glass work “acting as supportive material to inform the paintings”.

While the work has elements of autobiography, these are not explicit.

“The titles of the paintings are clues to autobiographical elements. For example, there’s a painting called Back Gate. We used to swing on this gate as kids and have great fun.

“When I was about three or four, I fell off the gate and broke both my arms. It was a big accident.

“I remember the reaction to it. It’s a big memory for me. So while the titles give clues to autobiographical references, when it comes to the paintings themselves, anybody can read into them and get their own meaning from them.”

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN FRIENDS

Debbie has enjoyed collaborating with Helle.

“It has really enriched our friendship which has been really positive. There are no egos involved. It has been a very worthwhile experience to be aware of where the other person is coming from and not stepping on their toes. At the same time, we’ve ensured that the work is coherent and compatible.”

Like Helle, Debbie teaches art at MTU Crawford. While working towards the exhibition, the pair had daily conversations but worked separately on their art.

“We allowed the work to evolve. We would tip around ideas and bounce ideas off each other. If we were struggling at any point, there would always be support on the phone.

“My work is quite different to Helle’s. It’s the landscape that holds the work of the two of us together.”

LIFE IN CORK

Helle is originally from Copenhagen. She first visited Cork for three months in 1991 and fell in love with the place. Back in Denmark, Helle did various art courses and decided to apply to the Crawford art college where she was accepted, starting her degree there in 1994. “Denmark has a lot of art schools but they’re more design oriented. I’m much more interested in fine art,” Helle said.

Living between Kilbrittan and Timoleague, Helle feels she has the best of both worlds.

“I’m close enough to Cork for work. I’m also close to nature. One of the reasons why I can’t leave Ireland is that the nature here is so rich. I just don’t have that in Denmark.”

A LOOK TO THE PAST

Helle did a masters in essay form in 2001 on prehistoric casting techniques.

“I specialise in prehistoric casting methods. I do my own bronze casting. I have a little foundry. I use a combination of pre-historic and modern methods. It means I can cast all my own work.”

She also makes jewellery for commissions.

What draws her to prehistoric techniques?

“I use different materials, but the skill set from prehistoric times is just phenomenal. I’m in awe of what they could do. I realised that those methods are very sustainable,” she said.

Helle’s work is in bronze and other precious metals in a number of finishes. Her work has always been concerned with the materials she uses and the landscapes she works in.

By combining bronze with organic material and drawing with solid objects, her aim is to blur the lines between worlds and to invite viewers to see landscape through a different lens.

A LOVE OF LANDSCAPE

For the exhibition, Helle has done drawings and also a lot of sculptural work.

“There’s a lot of bronzes and I also work in other materials such as wax. I’ve drawn elements of landscape. They’re abstract but they come from very specific places. I have one drawing that has elements of the Céide Fields in County Mayo because I was on a residency there. I call it my DNA place. I’m sure I was born there about 10,000 years ago. The landscape up there really speaks to me...

“What appeals to me about the Cork landscape is its rawness. The further west you go, there are cliffs and mountains that are so imposing.

“Where I live by the sea is a landscape that I don’t have in Denmark. There is something about it. It’s so vast and barren and yet so fertile. I’m in awe of it, particularly the rocks.”

As Helle points out, her work is a very different take on landscape than that of Debbie.

“Debbie’s landscape is very much imagined. She is going back in time, looking at the landscape where she grew up with all her memories.

“My landscape is a different kind of memory. The landscape itself has its own memory, if that makes sense. A lot of my sculptural work is figurative but abstract. It’s the landscape personified.

“There are figurative bronze pieces which, while abstract, have a story element. You can recognise them as figures but they’re not realistic figures.”

While Debbie delved into her past for the exhibition, Helle says she’d like to say she did also. “But it’s my really ancient past. For me, it’s personal, but it’s not my family. It’s my connection to the landscape. Nature is family to me.”

A publication accompanies the exhibition, with text by Sarah Kelleher and Pádraig Spillane and an introduction by curator by Róisín Foley.

“The profoundly tactile and sensuous materialist of each artist’s work mirrors the complexity of the stories held in the lived spaces they investigate,” writes Sarah Kelleher.

The exhibition, which opened on September 22, continues until October 15 at the Lavit Gallery on Wandesford Quay and is supported by Cork City Council, Cork County Council and the Arts Council.

For more, see www.lavitgallery.com

To find out more about Debbie’s work. see www.debbiedawsonstainedglass.com.

Meanwhile. check out www.hellehelsner.com for more about Helle’s work.