I alternate between writing, analysing and drawing. I find it difficult almost impossible to draw. I commit myself to automatic drawing projects to push myself out of control and into nowhere-land. Here fabulation, absurdities and dreams live.
Drawings in Antropocen 2022-2023
I draw in color and aquarell processing my confusion about human nature, culture and history. The writing and possessing of history and its symbols of power.
Paintings 2016-2020
Drawings, Strindberg, authorities and evolution
August Strindberg is highly valued and propagated in the Swedish cultural identity. I have mixed feelings of Strindberg but allie myself with is struggles with authorities at that time- a lonesome mind travel. I also investigate how reality is shaped by thinkers like Charles Darwin and Adam Smith creating narratives of absolute truths-thus serving as truth authorities. Through intuitive drawings I process authorities and how they influence us done for the exhibition Strindberg Sorti, Gallery Helena, 2012.
Black memories, black dreams
For the exhibition Black memories, black dreams at Nynäshamns konsthall, I work with oil and snail traces. Nynäshamn is an important harbour with a refinery-the largest supplier of bitumen for roads in the Nordic countries. Oil as a fossil memory, dark and hidden under ground made of organisms from the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago. Oil propel our present speedy nature and burn the fossil past into atmospheric CO2, changing climate, geology and earth history. Like a subconscious memory influencing the present. Somehow the snail and traces appear, maybe due to the lack of vertebra, their mollusk being and less developed brain. My emotions feels like mollusks, without spine, wet and without protection, leaving visible traits.
Shiftscale – Sculpture at the Extended Field
For the opening exhibition of the KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn KUMU Art Museum of Tallinn. During this time my mother passed away. There was a time of separation, waiting and travelling in time and place.
Early drawing projects
I commenced drawing projects, I expose myself everyday, 2000 and Makrolab residency, Atholl estate Scotland, 2002. The text `I expose myself every day´below became the start of drawing in my art practice
I expose myself every day´from the exhibition Prepositions in Newberry Gallery, Glasgow, 2000
For three and a half months I committed myself to a drawing project where the frame was to draw every day and publish one drawing from each day on a home-page I created on the internet (see, www.geocities.com/helenajohard/). I wanted to use this everyday ritual as a tool to investigate a non-edited inner world of mine. One reason to publish it on the net was to create an outside observer which would function as a motor to commit myself and get used to exposing myself. I also had an idea of fusing my inner brain network onto an outside network of communication. Most of the time I have the feeling that the outside is pushing itself onto me and I wanted to reverse that situation. I often started to draw consciously and as I continued sometimes drawings came automatically. The original aim was to draw throughout one year. As I drew I started to become more and more concerned with the outcome. I started to compare recent drawings with former drawings. When I had a picture of what sorts of drawings I liked I got detached from the process of drawing subconsciously. Such drawings felt faked. I said to myself, that this is just a part of the process, but it really made me depressed. Also the drawings became empty gestures when other things in my life overshadowed the drawing project and I did not have any time to concentrate. I felt embarrassed about those bad drawings and the drawing project started to feel like a prison. So after a lot of troubles with my web pages and the computer lab and me being very pressured I forgot to draw one day. I could not find a way back. Now, I am really sad to break my commitment. I think it would have been really important to overcome the self-editing process. But I found it so hard to show what I considered bad. I guess this is the clue of the whole project. Is it really possible to fully disconnect myself from my outcome in the presence of another? It feels like a contradiction to not edit and at the same time be exposed. Anyway I will continue to explore my subconscious by drawing, but I am not sure I want to be seen all the time These drawings are a mixture of the drawings from my drawing project. They do not include the worst drawings. I did edit.
