Helen Barff, Pocket 26

Helen Barff works with found objects and materials such as felt, plaster, concrete, rubber or photographic surfaces, using processes such as wrapping, casting or other interventions in space and surface. She is interested in how materials are shaped by temporality, or how memory becomes embedded in matter. A sensitivity to touch is central to her practice.

Pockets are casts of the inside of pockets: The secret hidden space, not usually seen but known intimately by touch, carrying belongings and secrets. The pocket casts turn that inside space into an object that, rather than containing the hand, becomes something the hand can hold, and a relic shaped by previous history.