OUTPOST
10b Wensum Street
Norwich
NR3 1HR
Tel: +44 (0) 1603 612428
questions@norwichoutpost.org
www.norwichoutpost.org
Helen Sykes
A Dog Walk Round New Costessey
Preview: Saturday 1 July 2006, 6.00pm to 9.00pm.
On view: 2 to 21 July, 12.00am to 6.00pm daily.
Artist’s talk: 2 July, 2pm.
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Helen Sykes’ exhibition takes as its inspiration and source material a number of dog walks that she
has been on with her family (and dogs). These walks have been undertaken in New Costessey, a
suburb of Norwich where some of her family lives. The parameters have forced the artist to
undergo a strange process of re-enacting the dog walks dog-less, experiencing the same routine
as the dogs and perhaps noticing her surroundings from a different viewpoint.
Sykes’ ink drawings are based in a visual language that is easy to access and understandable by
all. We are presented with cartoon like images of various views found along the route and
incorporating objects that may be found in any typical suburban scene; front gardens, telegraph
poles, grit buckets, conifers, crossroads, hedges, fences and brick walls. The viewpoints sometimes
include ‘Bunker Hill’, a popular but nondescript mound of woodland. The series of drawings seem
to have elements of comic-strip stories, but if we try to find a narrative link between them we may
find that it evades us, seeming to be hidden behind a bush or wall, just out of the viewer’s reach.
The simple pleasure of a dog-walk focuses attention on an area of Sykes’ interest; what is, or is
not, monumental. It can be seen as a reaction to the sidelining that can go on in any kind of
avenue, hierarchies that make come things more important to society at large than others. The
choice of cartoon imagery was made as an appropriate method to present the subject in hand; as
in many of Sykes’ works the project dictates the media, and in this case the simplification of
complex information that cartoon imagery affords was of particular interest. There is a clarity of
image and intention within the drawings that relates to Sykes’ interest in, and exploration of,
visual and physical spaces and forms.
The drawings contain a Zen-like feel and expression, with objects being reduced to their elemental
parts (a bush is represented using the minimum of effort required), but this very economy of
movement leaves space for imagination and infilling by the audience. The drawings in this
exhibition are the combination of an unlikely set of factors: the arbitrary nature of a dog walk, an
interest in cartoons and a self-imposed conceptual restriction. These factors combine to reflect the
simplicity and possible Zen-like nature of a dog-walk; a celebration of the simple joy of ‘walkies’
that could perhaps best be expressed in a potential book title ‘Zen and the art of walkies’.
Helen Sykes was born in London in 1967. She studied for a degree in Literature and a Masters in
Women Writing at the University of Essex. She later studied Fine Art at St Martins College, London
and Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia. Her work was recently included in the touring
Jerwood Drawing Prize. The exhibition at OUTPOST is her first solo show. She lives and works in
London and Norwich.
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For further information please contact Kaavous Clayton at questions@norwichoutpost.org or on 07814562906.