Helen Gilbart will be joining the Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival 2025 with John Christie as Gilbarts’ Book of Hours will be displayed in the Courtyard Gallery during the festival weekend.
1:15 – 2:15pm at Courtyard Gallery, Ballroom Arts, 152A High Street, Aldeburgh, Suffolk IP15 5AQ
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Book of Hours I & II is a Covid project by artist Helen Gilbart, consisting of nearly 800 small, mixed media paintings on playing cards made between the first lockdown in March 2020 and September 2021. These images form two books that were produced entirely within the artist’s rural studio near the Suffolk coast.
The project forms a visual chronology and journey through the pandemic, utilising symbolism and global references to explore the growing enormity and understanding of the pandemic in the UK & beyond. The Books explore the human crisis of Covid, with its effects on health and society at its heart, but seen within a wide cultural, social and political context. References include the race for a Covid vaccination, health and political strategies, the US presidential election, climate crisis, archaeological discoveries and much more. References are both personal and universal, and contextualised by wide ranging iconographic source materials. It’s a highly relatable work, as viewers are taken from the private and intimate environment of an artist’s thought process into the surrounding Suffolk countryside and beyond.
For this exhibition the Art Station photographed and digitised Book of Hours I & II to engage the public with this very delicate work in detail through an interactive microsite, which also includes explanatory notations, interviews and associated links. An associated film about the project has been made by Emily Richardson. Watch the film here.
Please go to the microsite to view the Book of Hours I & II.
Based in East Suffolk, the land and it’s human histories most interest Helen Gilbart. She works predominantly from direct observation. These keen interests led to a joint degree in Geography and Fine Art, then a postgraduate at Central St Martins. Fine Art awards enabled her to paint for a year in Cyprus and later a year in Spain. Gilbart was Artist in Residence in the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Cambridge between 1999 and 2006, working with Earth Scientists and outstanding palaeontology. In 2009 Gilbart was funded to work at the UNESCO Burgess Shale fossil beds in Field, British Columbia as part of Darwin200.
Since 2010 archaeological themes have dominated. Projects include those triggered through the British Museum; working from their hidden collections and in the AHOB (Ancient Human Occupation of Britain) investigations at Happisburgh, Norfolk.
This project has been made possible by funding from the Suffolk County Council Covid Continuity Fund for Culture.