Helen Stratford
Helen Stratford is a practising artist, architect and critical writer based in Cambridgeshire. Qualified to postgraduate level in Architectural Practice and Critical Theory, in 2004/2005 she was resident fellow in architecture at Akademie Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany. She is also a member of ‘taking place’ a feminist collective of artists and architects, a Creative Practitioner for Creative Partnerships, Arts Council England and an architect at MOLE architects. Her work and research has formed the basis of many spoken papers, performances, exhibitions and presentations at international conferences and events, including most recently a 6-month residency at Wysing Arts Centre, on the Communities under Construction programme
Located between performance art, architecture and writing, her practice explores the role everyday objects, and activities play in supporting certain ways of being or placing. Process-led and research based her work investigates the rhythms and routines by which people negotiate, define and produce everyday spaces. She realises projects across a variety of media that combine performance/dance and architecture, practice and theory, intervention and lecture. To date, outcomes have included performative walks, exhibitions, interventions, lectures, films and artist's books, all produced through site-specific research that explores the effects of the built environment; its influences on how people rest, move and live. In analysing the rhythms of daily life her practice investigates how can we can re-think the power of the built environment within these social, political, economic and emotional infrastructures in order to ask how places are performed. Through embodying alternative strategies of using public space her practice offers new manners of acting and produces alternative social processes through spatial interventions.
From March - August 2009 Helen was a resident artist at Wysing. For the residency her work made visible the practices that produce and maintain the open spaces in the nearby settlement of Cambourne. Gathered by Helen during the residency, these practices include those of local residents, young people, groundsmen, road sweepers, light scouts, planners and people working on their allotments. Helen's work builds on the many conversations she had by exploring ways to activate spaces through spatial and audio interventions and through a bookwork that provides a playful critique of the measured environment that is distinctive to Cambourne. 'Mechanical Operations in Cambourne,' produced in collaboration with artist Lawrence Bradby, is published by marmalade, distributed by central books and available to be ordered from all good bookshops. filmarmalade.co.uk.
forthcoming projects include Crop Marks residency, Orchard Park August 2009, Nightjar Festival, Cambridge, October 2009, Constructing Knowledge, Aachen, November 2009 with artist Diana Wesser, as well as an ongoing public art residency ' The other Side of Waiting' at Homerton Hospital, London with art and architecture collective 'taking place.' Helen's work is generally collaborative in nature. The transdisciplinary, participatory and public space based aspects of her practice connects her to many networks of people, including participatory based alternate architecture practices, feminist spatial practices and performance based research.