Helen Cass

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Previously shown in

winter collection 2019

linear expression 2022

landmarked 2024

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constructed 2025

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Helen’s work continues to navigate the changing relationship between line and surface. The means she uses to do this are quiet, repetitive and direct, habitual processes developed over time, such as folding, drawing, weaving, cutting and scoring line onto or into the surface of paper. The work involved is the drawing’s content.

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In this series of drawings, Helen has used heavyweight, white drawing paper. Its toughness resists her processes to a certain extent – to tear, etch or fold it needs determined force. It has substance, she can take a layer away or scratch through its top surface and it retains structure. Helen likes the juxtaposition of rigorous control with chance accidents. While starting the woven displacement drawings she was considering geoglyphs, shapes cut into the land that communicate and confound across time, reading lost times. She likes how the weight of the paper opposes the pressure of her hand, which for Helen often alludes to marking the earth with a tool or stitching through layers of fabric. The ink line is a line of enquiry, she likes how one surface can be disrupted and layered by another, and likes how accumulated lines drawn closely can form a new surface.

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Helen uses mundane materials, paper and ink, within a circumscribed set of variables. Paper is a utilitarian material, invented to record and carry information, it can be found everywhere and has been universally absorbed by every culture from shopping lists to global treaties, used to wrap precious objects and divide spaces. The beauty and ordinariness of paper documents and their potential to embody meaning is a continual preoccupation when she draws.

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Click images for details and if you are interested in any of Helen Cass' work please enquire below.​​​​​​​​