Helen Cammock (°1970, Staffordshire) is a British artist who works across moving image, photography, writing, poetry, performance, printmaking and installation. She is interested in histories, authorship, storytelling and the excavation of unheard, excluded and buried voices. In her research-based practice, Cammock often maps her own writing, literature, poetry, philosophical and other found texts, onto social and political situations. She attempts to interrogate the ways stories are told, the hierarchy of histories and who is rendered invisible and therefore unacknowledged. Her solo exhibition in STUK, Beneath the surface of skin, presents two recent bodies of work: Che si può fare (2019) explores the power of women’s laments and their potential to act as expressions of survival, resilience, and hope. In They Call it Idlewild (2020) Cammock’s voice, supported by a gentle stream of slowly moving images, muses on the concept of idleness, the politics of laziness, and purposelessness as a form of privilege.
On the occasion of her solo exhibition in STUK, Helen Cammock shares some insights into both works and her practice in general in a video talk.