Helen Cammock was born in Staffordshire, England in 1970. Graduating with a BA (Hons) in Photography from the University of Brighton and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London (after an earlier career as a social worker), her professional artistic practice encompasses film, photography, print, text and performance, and explores issues of identity, racism and class from the perspective of a queer woman of colour. In 2018 she was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and in 2019 she was a co-winner of the Turner Prize (along with the other three nominees, Tai Shani, Oscar Murillo and Lawrence Abu Hamdan) for her solo exhibition 'The Long Note' at Void Gallery, Derry (2018).
Artist Helen Cammock was born in Staffordshire, England in 1970 to a Jamaican ceramicist father and an English mother. She grew up in London and Somerset and subsequently worked for ten years as a social worker. In 2008 she was awarded a BA (Hons) in Photography from the University of Brighton and in 2011 she completed an MA at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London. Cammock’s practice encompasses film, photography, print, text and performance, exploring in her research the complexities of social histories as well as issues of identity, racism and class from the perspective of a queer woman of colour. Of central import is the voice: the uncovering of marginal voices within history, the question of who speaks on behalf of whom, as well as how her own voice reflects on the stories she shares. Her work is characterised by fragmented, non-linear narratives as she makes leaps between different places, times and contexts, seeking to connect stories and voices across time with common themes of oppression, feminist resistance and solidarity. In so doing, she forces viewers to acknowledge the impact of multifaceted global relations and the inextricable connections between the individual and society.
In 2018 Cammock was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women at a ceremony held at the Whitechapel Gallery, where, the following year she was given a solo show, based on her residency in Italy. ‘Travelling from Bologna to Florence, Venice, Rome, Palermo and Reggio Emilia, Cammock met historians, musicians and singers who opened their archives, shared their lives and research – and gave her singing lessons’ (Whitechapel Gallery website). The title of her project (and the Whitechapel exhibition), Che si può fare (What can be done) was taken from a 1664 aria by Italian composer Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677). ‘Through her residency she collected the testimonies of activists, migrants and refugees, witnessing the transformation of lament into the expression of survival and resilience’ (Whitechapel Gallery website). Their stories emerged in a body of new works: a split screen film; a triptych of vinyl cut prints; a group performance and a screen-printed frieze that captures the power of women’s voices from the Baroque period to Italy today. The following year, Cammock was awarded the Turner Prize (along with the other three nominees, Tai Shani, Oscar Murillo and Lawrence Abu Hamdan) for her solo exhibition The Long Note at Void Gallery, Derry (2018). Commissioned by Void and subsequently exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2019), The Long Note is a film which explores the history and role of women in the civil rights movement in Londonderry in 1968, a period generally acknowledged to be the starting point of the Troubles - the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that spanned the 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The Long Note set out to expand and complicate contemporary narratives, placing women's voices at the fore by weaving together various archive materials, newly produced footage, and a series of interviews with women active in the movement, as well as those affected by it. Cammock’s non-didactic interview style allowed her subjects to speak, without heavy editing or direction, presenting a reality which is convoluted and open-ended. A very particular place and moment in time is thus used as a vehicle to reflect upon broader civil rights struggles globally, as well as subtly alluding to the many ways in which these same struggles continue in different forms today (Turner Prize 2019- Helen Cammock, Tate website).
In 2020 Cammock’s work was exhibited in a solo exhibition, They Call it Idlewild at the Wysing Arts Centre, which consisted of a film and two outdoor billboards that arrested the viewer’s attention on entering and exiting the building. Against a green colour field, the text on one billboard read: ‘Can you remember when you last did nothing?’ The other, against a maroon background, read: ‘When you last did nothing / Can you remember how it felt?’. Although made before the Covid 19 pandemic took hold, reviewer Erica Scourti noted that, ‘Cammock’s static camera, placed originally to linger on interior details of Wysing’s studio spaces, accommodation and grounds, all places of artistic activity now dormant, seems to anticipate our arrested motion’ (Erica Scourti, Why, They Call it Idlewild, MAP Magazine, May 2020). In 2021 a new film and installation project by Cammock entitled Concrete Feathers and Porcelain Tacks was commissioned for the collection of Touchstones Rochdale as part of Equal Shares, a collaboration between Film and Video Umbrella and the Contemporary Art Society, supported by the Mbili Foundation, to enable museums and galleries in the northwest of England to commission, exhibit and acquire new moving image work. In an exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery, London (and at Touchstones Rochdale) Concrete Feathers was presented across twin project screens alongside a selection of objects, paintings and screen-prints. Her work also featured in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, a survey exhibition at Tate Britain (2021-22). Helen Cammock lives and works in Brighton and London, England. Her work is held in UK public collections including Transport for London and Touchstones Rochdale.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Helen Cammock]
Publications related to [Helen Cammock] in the Ben Uri Library