Helen Pailing is an artist-maker who seeks to redefine the possibilities of materials for sculpture and to ‘recraft waste’ materials into sculptures, assemblages and site-specific interventions. She uses haptic knowledge to inform her work.

The materials Helen uses are often remnants of the process of making; glass from lampworking and salvaged utilitarian materials; bed springs, window blinds, fixtures and fittings – all having their own history, form, structure and intention. Helen then stitches, wraps and weaves in response to them – using craft techniques to connect, transform and create new works that exist in a state of tension. The work therefore sits in a space between the bound, fixed and hand-made and the precarious unmade, as though the works could unwrap or unravel at any moment. Larger modular installations occupy space in a provisional way as Helen reconfigures, reassembles and re-organises matter in spaces, often as a direct response to the location. All of this forms a playful engagement and collaboration between maker and matter.

An economy of means and materials is integral to Helen’s process. Reusing materials destined for landfill is her form of quiet activism, aiming to raise awareness of seemingly non-precious or redundant ‘waste’ and celebrate the inherent value within all matter.