Aim / Constrain by Helen Bur

Helen Bur is a British artist working between the UK and on the road where she has participated in outdoor and indoor projects world-wide from Brazil to Norway with exhibitions in USA, UK and Europe. Using traditionally influenced techniques in figuration, sensitive and poetic narratives are used as tools to dissect and understand experiences.

Helen Bur's solo exhibition Silent Shout was presented at the Saatchi Gallery in 2021. Painted figures are captured in moments of quiet action, self-reflection and stillness. Obscured in the pause of a gesture and imbued with a sense of the surreal, Bur sensitively depicts those around her as fragments of the bigger picture. Internal dialogues become social narratives and the personal becomes global.

Combining lose gestural marks with traditionally influenced figuration, we are invited to pause, come to stillness in a moment of motion and experience the subtle nuances of emotion that can be felt and held on the canvas surfaces. Silent Shout features works that encourage the viewer to question how we need others to truly understand ourselves. In the words of Sophie Mak-Schram, “Bur’s paintings silently make sound, gesture rather than say, and come to stillness in a moment of motion, They hover in the moment of becoming…transforming…about to make some noise”.