Statement                                                                              Helena Ben-Zenou

Referring to architecture and city views, my paintings have tended to explore the transitory and contradictory nature of cities through the production of urban landscapes.

Works originate through visiting sites of architectural interest, taking photographs, making sketches, and walking through the city itself – an informed ambling. Through this I have become increasingly interested in exploring industrial landscapes - factories, docklands, industrial sites, and also the transitory structures of construction.

The paintings sit somewhere between abstraction and representation, and involve the application of industrial materials. I use marble dust, limestone dusts, steel wool, cement, slate powder and various industrial paints to take the subject matter direct to the canvas.
These materials are redolent of cities industry and building; and also of sculpture and three-dimensional forms, they have their own identity, which they retain on the picture surface.
From the bottom looking upwards, to exclusive views from the heights - I am also interested in the power in perspective, both its illusory quality in painting, its effect on the viewer, and its wider symbolism.
From the end of 2002 until April 2005, I investigated the landscape of the A13, an arterial road that runs from Aldgate in London, East through Essex to Southend and Shoeburyness. During this time, in collaboration with writer Iain Sinclair and artist Jock McFadyen, walks along various stretches of the road provided starting points for new works that responded to the road and its environs.

Sprawling decaying industry, Docklands, programmes of construction, polluted nature, concrete, asphalt, and the relentless, flat, bleakness of the road, and its environs, provided a wealth of material about cities, their entrances, exits, and their peripheries.

As part of the Vickers Art Award 2005/06, I have recently completed a new series of large-scale paintings that explore the Industrial landscapes of Derbyshire. The award brief was to respond to Nikolaus Pevsner's opening sentence in the Derbyshire edition of “The Buildings of England” series. In it, Pevsner refers to Derbyshire as a “County of Contrasts”.

From the rural architecture of the Derbyshire quarries and mines, to major urban industrial and construction sites in Derby, this series of large-scale paintings investigated the contrasts of the Derbyshire Industrial Landscape.
I began the award by walking through and photographing a number of quarries and mines in the North of Derbyshire. Each quarry and mine although within close proximity of each other produce very different tones and qualities of limestone dust, and I have been able to use this in the generating a variety of tonal qualities of the work.
Research into the urban industrial landscape took me to Test Beds 57 and 58 at Rolls Royce - vast jet engine testing facilities, one in use one in construction. Also to Quarries and Mines in the Derble, raw brick, fired brick, coal and Alabaster (gypsum) dust and powders.
By referring directly to architectural structures and views, and through the use of materials directly associated with landscape, buildings and industry, I aim in my work to capture the beauty in the accepted unsightly and to raise questions about the changing landscapes Britain.

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