This volume re-examines perhaps British artist Helen Chadwick's most iconic series 'Wreaths to Pleasure, 1992-93'. Consisting of 13 colour photographs of organic matter within household fluids, each is set within its own uniquely coloured steel frame.

Highly respected by her peers and hugely influential on the subsequent generation of artists, the British artist Helen Chadwick produced a wideranging body of work in a variety of media, which shifted from early institutional and architectural critique to operatic installations, and to photographic projects and sculptures. Stephen Walker looks behind this apparent variety, identifying a consistent range of interests - ranging from classical Greek through to sub-particle physics - that accompanied and supported Chadwick's realised work. Although she enjoyed significant critical attention in her lifetime, this is the first study to explore the rich archive which informed her oeuvre. Critical of the impact that limiting political, philosophical and scientific constructions have on identity, Chadwick's work can offer insights into the relationship between body and space; self and world; art and science; artifice and nature; theory and practice; the creative self and the creative process. Dismantling and reassembling her ideas, this book combines a close reading of Chadwick's notebooks and research with broader speculation regarding their ongoing relevance for artistic and architectural work today.

An illustrated exploration of Helen Chadwick’s erotic, playful, and fierce 1986 installation. In 1986 the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London showed a new commission by the artist Helen Chadwick (1954–1996). What Chadwick conceived for the ICA exhibition explored her characteristic themes—the female body (her own), the aesthetics of pleasure, the material variety and wonder of phenomena—but took them in a new, flamboyant direction. In this illustrated volume, Marina Warner examines one part of Chadwick’s installation, The Oval Court. This work was erotic, playful, and fierce; it showed imaginative ambition on an exceptional scale and a unique, piquant sensibility, both raunchy and delicate. Despite the work’s recognition as a feminist monument of rare intensity, it has rarely been shown or discussed since the author’s catalogue essay for the original exhibition. Warner here reconsiders Chadwick’s influence as an artist who helped to shift conventional aesthetics and transvalue despised, even abominated forms. Exploring the work’s richly layered composition in light of intervening years, Warner shows how Chadwick’s imagination has shaped many artists’ ideas and ethics, and emboldened their adventures with materials.

Edited by Mark Sladen. Essays by Mary Horlock and Eva Martischnig.

An anthology of enlightening writing by an award-winning critic that engages with art in its social, political, and aesthetic contexts. Art writing at its most useful should share the dynamism, fluidity, and passions of the objects of its enquiry, argues author Marina Warner in this new anthology. Here, some of Warner’s most compelling writing captures the visual experience of the work of a diverse group of artists—with a notable focus on the inner lives of women—through an exploration of the range of stories and symbols to which they allude in their work. Warner vividly describes this imagery, covering the connection with animals in the work of Louise Bourgeois, the Catholicism of Damien Hirst, performance as a medium of memory in the installations of Joan Jonas, and more. Rather than drawing on connoisseurship, Warner’s approach grows principally out of anthropology and mythology. Accompanied by illustrations of the works being described, Marina Warner’s writing unites the imagination of artist, writer, and reader, creating a reading experience that parallels the intrinsic pleasure of looking at art. This book will appeal to any student of art history, those interested in philosophy, feminism, and more generally in the humanities.