Archive: review

UK artist to launch Omani Women exhibition – OmanGB

9th October, 2015

Omani Women, OmanGB, Helen Couchman, Oman, women, portraiture

UK artist to launch Omani Women exhibition

A British artist’s exhibition of photos of Omani women is set to open at Gallery Sarah in Muscat on October 12 – the same week as Omani Women’s Day.

Omani Women, which is also set to be exhibited in London in November, features 146 portraits taken by acclaimed artist Helen Couchman.

An associated book of the same name, funded by the UK-based Anglo-Omani Society, is also set to be launched at both events.

Helen, who completed a BA in Fine Art at Sir John Cass in London in 1996 and an MA in Critical Fine Art Practice at Central St Martins two years later, first visited Oman in February 2012.

“I was immediately struck by the country’s welcome and warm beauty,” she said. “Then, while on an expedition in the desert at the edge of The Empty Quarter, I happened upon two Bedouin women who were walking as if from nowhere through the unmarked dunes. They invited me for cardamom coffee and fresh dates and showed me around their farm, which was hidden behind a couple of dunes.

 

Review article – The Global Times, ‘Mirror Images’

11th June, 2011

Global Times 11th, June 2011

Artist reflects on hutong development

by Song Yuanyuan

In a small gallery on Guloudong Dajie hang 23 framed photographs. They document the changes in the Gulou (Drum Tower) area as seen by British artist Helen Couchman, 38, who’s lived in a nearby hutong for over four years.

But what’s especially striking is her use of three mirrors placed in such a way that they also reflect the landscape around back into the frame. A Beijing friend gave them to her but they sat on her desk for a long time. “At the end of 2009, I started photographing, thinking about the illusion, and the way I could look underneath things or behind things or at far things with the mirrors,” she said. Couchman explained the mirrors gave her different views, allowing her to see things around her. The mirrors enable her to focus on the textures and see the distance of something in the same picture, “kind of getting the close in with the far,” she added. With the mirrors, she deliberately mixes the view with something natural and bright green, a contrast with the gray sky.

The project is part of Couchman’s PhD research in landscape changes, trying to find out how it changes and in the meantime reviewing the people who live through these changes. “It’s about how we use the land to reveal these things, our economics, politics, and culture,” Couchman explained.

In February 2006, she came to Beijing by train from Moscow, and this became her first Asian experience. “I wanted to see the distance; how far it is from Europe. I was reading how China was changing very fast. Everyone was writing about its economic stories and Yangtze dam; so I had to go quickly to see the landscape changes, I want to see it before, and why it changes and after. I had wanted to come to other places, but China became where I wanted to come to desperately.”

Her photographs depict the Gulou area’s recent changes, in particular during and after demolitions. “I want people to feel like they’re walking the line between old Beijing and the new areas that have been demolished, following the edge of these two places and where they converge. In one direction, you have the romantic beautiful hutong views, and in the other way, you have the earth, the buildings, holes, ground, and the mud,” she said.

Her bare feet are often shown in her photos too, touching the earth, like a performance. “I’m standing there and deciding where to put the mirrors, walking around, feeling it, getting dirty with it to get the ‘on the earth’ feeling, kind of making something out of that moment,” she said. “It’s not a digital illusion; stepping foot on these places, I got really dirty, but it’s nice to be so physical with the place, touching things, which gives you a better understanding,” she said.

Mrs. West’s Hats review – The Hat magazine

12th November, 2009
Mrs. West's Hats by Helen Couchman. The Hat Magazine, Issue.43. page 42

Click to enlarge

in print

Mrs West’s Hats
by Helen Couchman with an introduction by Anthony Gorman

Mrs. West’s Hats is the first publication in book form of a series of sixty photographic self-portraits produced by the artist Helen Couchman in 1997. The title of the piece refers to Couchman’s maternal grandmother, Mrs West (1909-1993). In the photographs Couchman, made up to look like a young woman of the austere 1940’s or ’50s, is seen wearing a succession of her grandmother’s hats, as though acting out the “role” of her own grandmother as she would have looked during that period.

Carole Denford
The Hat Magazine No. 43. November 2009, page 42

Mrs. West’s Hats review – Country Life, ‘Hats off to new book’

6th November, 2009

Country life for web
in print

Hats off to new book

A young British artist this week unveiled a striking and stylish hardback book that features 60 self-portraits in which she wears a succession of her late grandmother’s vintage hats. Helen Couchman, who grew up in rural Wales andHampshire, re discovered the collection, from the 1940s and 50s, in a chest of drawers after the death of her much-loved grandmother, with whom she spent part of her childhood. To explore inheritance, heritage and memory, Couchman resolved to photograph herself wearing every hat she found, and the result is Mrs West’s Hats.

Despite the austerity of the post-war era, the hats are lively and full of character – demonstrating perhaps that imaginative milliners could give women a means to express themselves despite fabric rationing. Dr Anthony Gorman writes in his foreword: “As the example of Mrs West’s headgear shows, hats are as diverse and expressive as faces.”

Miss Couchman’s favourite is a close-fitting bright blue creation decorated with little imitation flowers. “It’s extraordinary, and you can see in the photo that my expression is a bit puzzled,” she says. “Another interesting one is in straw, designed in keeping with Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ collection of 1947.”

Couchman exhibited the photographs in London and Armenia before publishing them in book form. The work follows another photographic project, Workers, a series of portraits of Chinese migrant workers who were building the infrastructure for last year’s Olympic Games.

Yolanda Carslaw

Mrs. West’s Hats review – Dakai magazine

26th October, 2009

To view this and the images selected see: www.dakaidakai.com
Dakai magazine is a new online journal of the independent arts devoted to creating a necessary, mutually nurturing bridge between the artistic communities of China and the rest of the world.

Beijing based artist Helen Couchman’s new book uses an eclectic collection of hats left to her by her departed grandmother to weave a striking and stylish narrative of an adventurous young woman and her exploration of identity and self-presentation.
A celebration of both her grandmother’s life and mid-twentieth millenary design, Couchman’s photographs ape the fashion photography of the time and resurrect an array of bold and colorful characters that although long out of “fashion” seem as vibrant and exciting as anything we’ve seen recently. The hats, all of which are authentic vintage, range in style from the colorful and classically feminine to the avant-garde, gently recalling a time before the sleekness of the modern era when a hat could serve as the proverbial “cherry on top” of a dignified yet colorful outfit.

New Work landscape prints reviewed – Crafts Council magazine, ‘Contemporary Chinoiserie’

1st November, 2008

chinoisery article small

…The vision of China represented in this exhibition is, as its title suggests, still a romantic and fanciful one, though more actively engaged and critical than its antecedents. Moments of darker realities do pierce through uncomfortably, with Helen Couchman’s paper works commenting on the changes in Beijing’s built environment and Gayle Chong Kwan’s detached observation of the deserted English-style satellite town outside Shanghai. …

Gigi Chang was assistant curator of China Design Now at the Victoria and Albert museum.

Crafts. Nov/Dec 2008

www.helencouchman.com/portfolio-items/new-work

WORKERS 工人 review – The Age

7th August, 2008

Silent workers get their moment to shine before the Games begin
Mary-Anne Toy

The Age newspaper and here on-line. 7th August 2008

07aug08_NAA_A09

Click on image to enlarge

 

THEY line up one by one to have their picture taken. Behind them are the new Olympic stadiums that will define Beijing and China for the decades to come.

But in a twist of perspective, it is not the magnificent steel lattice of the National Stadium’s “Bird’s nest” or the space-age blue bubbles of the “water cube” Aquatic Centre that dominate the picture, but the individual migrant workers whose sweat and blood – at least six workers died during Olympic construction – have created these structures.

British artist Helen Couchman, who has lived in Beijing for 18 months, sneaked on to the Olympic building site over two days and offered to take pictures of any workers willing to pose.

She deliberately used the same background, with the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube, for each picture to focus attention on the individual. She returned a few days later to give each worker a print. (A few are anonymous because they could not return or be tracked down).

At first people shuffled around uncertainly, but once the first volunteer stepped up she was inundated. Couchman had to encourage people to get back to work so that she wasn’t ejected from the site.

When she returned to distribute the pictures she got each worker to write down their name, village and province.

The resulting 143 portraits, along with the worker’s signatures – the individual Chinese characters vary from sweeping calligraphy to simple characters – have been published in a book titled Workers (Gongren).

In the pre-Olympics crackdown, Couchman’s first printer decided they could not print the book without government authorisation, the day after the proofs had been approved.

She managed to find another printer willing to take on what she considered to be an apolitical project that celebrated the workers behind Beijing’s Olympic transformation.

The book was launched in Beijing before Couchman flew to London in late June to take part in an international exhibition on China’s new buildings, which included eight of the migrant worker portraits and the book. She was then invited to show the portraits and launch the book in Hong Kong last month.

“The reason for doing the project was I was thinking of Lewis Hine photographing the people who built the Empire State Building in New York and the photos of the Eiffel Tower being built in Paris – these historic cities, captured in their construction, being built by these unknown workers,” Couchman said.

“Back then in New York it would have been migrant workers, the Irish and the Italians . . . here it’s about the migrant workers who have come from all corners of China.

“I wanted the project to be about the people, hence the composition with the worker in the centre of the frame. It (the portrait) becomes a piece of personal family history and will return to the countryside with them . . . that’s what I’m so delighted about, that these photographs have travelled back with these workers to their home villages all over China.

“These people will not see the Olympics, except on television, but from the photograph, a villager in some remote part of China will see that their uncle or aunt, or mother or father, played a key role in the 2008 Olympic preparations.”

Ironically, as part of Beijing’s clean-up, the city’s hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have been sent home for two months.

WORKERS 工人 review – SCMP

3rd August, 2008

Photographer puts faces to the construction of the Games sites

by Ng Tze-wei
South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, Thursday, July 31, 2008 (page 7)

They may have helped build two of the most significant structures in modern Chinese history – the National Stadium and the National Aquatics Centre – for the BJ Olympics, but the thousands-strong workforce has remained faceless. Until now.

A group of 143 men and women from provinces as far away as Gansu and Sichuan posed for British artist Helen Couchman’s latest project, a book called Workers, which attempts to put a face to the mammoth projects.

Before her lens some appear formal while others are nervous; some wear a poker face, but most beam a smile, amused and somewhat proud. The portraits all share the same backdrop – the venues known as the “Bird’s Nest” and the “Water Cube “.

Couchman said much of the news on the BJ Olympics had focused on landmark buildings, but, she reasoned, what about the people who actually welded the intricate steel structures together and put the many pieces in place?

“The Empire State Building and other historic buildings like the Eiffel Tower – we see photographs with [workers] in them, but we are not sure who they were,” said the 35-year-old, who moved to Beijing 19 months ago and has just begun to communicate with the locals in broken Chinese.

“When you photograph people as individuals, they become memorable. They are no longer a group, a mass, an unknown quantity.”

British art critic Peter Suchin writes in the book’s introduction that the way Chinese positions the workers at roughly the same spot for each portrait suggests they can also be seen as “one single portrait, that of `the worker’ engaged in the making of the Place of the Games … the central focus, the essential signifier of the new BJ”.

Couchman, who received her master of fine arts degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, said she had always been interested in portraying urban landscapes through various media.

Her previous works in Beijing include collages in ink, and woodblock prints depicting features of a new city, such as high rises and ring roads, using traditional Chinese motifs.

For this project though, her shift in focus had much to do with the hype surrounding the architecture of the two main Olympic venues.

She said she wanted to go back to the fundamental question of what the Games meant to BJ and the nation.

“I’ve always done work about overlooked landscapes,” Couchman said.

“But here everyone is talking about the buildings, the buildings that are going to represent the new China.

“So for me, the workers became the ones who were overlooked.”

Taking the 143 photographs formed only half the project. The other half involved putting the images into a book to provide interesting details of how Couchman carried out her project, and a wealth of information about the workers that lends significance to the artist’s work.

For two days last December, Couchman dodged tight security and sneaked into the construction site of the “Water Cube”, offering to take pictures of workers.

Those who agreed to take part were each promised a copy of the photograph to take home.

So after the pictures were developed, she sneaked back to distribute them.

Those who heard about the return of the foreigner photographer showed up to collect their pictures, and signed Couchman’s “autograph” book.

A handful never came back. Some had already returned home, the other workers said.

She adopted a presentation format reminiscent of Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong’s ‘Battlefield Realism: The Eighteen Arhats’, which features signed portraits of nine pairs of soldiers from the mainland and Taiwan.

Each labourer wrote their names on the original prints, and the autographs effectively tell the story of how far the workers travelled and the transient lifestyle they lead as migrant workers.

The details provide the human touch – such as how one wrote her surname in the wrong character and crossed it out, and others who practised writing their names on the backs of their hands first, or with help from friends. They indicate the limited education received by these workers, still the hardest-working toilers at the bottom of the new Chinese social order.

Couchman fully expected workers’ rights to be raised in panel discussions during the book’s launch in BJ this month.

However, she was taken aback by the ferocity of a question on whether her work had glossed over workers’ conditions on the mainland, often cited as an example of the nation developing too recklessly with little regard to the human cost.

“It’s good if my work raises awareness [of workers’ conditions]; however, it was not my reason for starting this project,” Couchman said.

“If I had aimed to make this project about workers’ rights, it would not be what it is.”

‘Workers’ (Gong Ren) will be launched in Hong Kong today. A selection of 55 portraits will be exhibited at ‘Solutions for a Modern City’, from today to Sunday at Park Court, Pacific Place.

SCMP South China Morning Post review WORKERS by Helen Couchman

WORKERS 工人 review – The New Yorker

27th June, 2008

This morning I notice that ‘The Book Bench’ in the The New Yorker magazine have covered WORKERS 工人. See the brief article titled WORK UNIT here or read below.

Under Loose leafs from the New Yorker Books Department this article was published on the 19th June.

WORKERS in the New Yorker

WORK UNIT

Last December, the photographer Helen Couchman shot portraits of a hundred and forty-three Chinese laborers at the construction sites of the two most iconic buildings of the Beijing Olympics, the National Stadium (a.k.a. the Bird’s Nest) and the National Aquatics Center (a.k.a. the Water Cube). According to the publisher of her new book, “Gong Ren” (“Workers”), she was able to bypass the authorities and approach her subjects individually—a feat that seems extraordinary, given the government’s intense micro-management of what is essentially the nation’s global coming-out party.

As Paul Goldberger noted in a recent review, these new Olympic monuments were “made possible partly by the presence of huge numbers of low-paid migrant workers”; the construction crew for the Bird’s Nest alone “numbered nine thousand at its peak.” He expressed reservations about the price exacted for the sky line’s glory:

In both conception and execution, the best of Beijing’s Olympic architecture is unimpeachably brilliant. But the development also exemplifies traits—the reckless embrace of the fashionable and the global, the authoritarian planning heedless of human cost—that are elsewhere denaturing, even destroying, the fabric of the city.

A slide show of images of the buildings is online; Couchman’s book launch will be celebrated at the Beijing Bookworm tomorrow night.

Ligaya Mishan