Helen Barff

Overview

Helen Barff is a sculptor, living and working in London. She graduated from Goldsmiths College in Fine Art and Art History BA (Hons) in 1999 and completed a drawing MA at Camberwell College of Art in 2004. She has exhibited in various locations in the UK and internationally, including a solo show 'I Wrap My Fear Around Me Like A Blanket' at Close Ltd and Taunton Brewhouse in 2022, and 'Finding Family', a group show at the Foundling Museum, London. Helen also teaches and runs workshops, most recently with Market Hall Museum, Warwick working with a group of female immigrants exploring memory and migration.

In 2023 Barff was a finalist in the Royal Society of Sculptors 'First Plinth: Public Art Award'.

Her work is held in various collections in the UK, Canada, Mexico and the USA.

"Barff has a longstanding interest in making sculpture that is driven from history, science and storytelling. Mapping her way through a journey of investigation and finding meaning by stitching together significant historical facts and overlooked practices, materials and techniques. She explores through communications and conversations with people that span a wide demographic. Since her graduation from Goldsmiths College 1999, she has created an eccentric menagerie of sculptures that take on a presence of animal, human, or something in-between. Her work suggests the complexity of life as well as the mythologies, superstitions and vanities that underpin it the shadowy ‘other’ within us all." Freeny Yianni, Close Ltd