Helen Benigson: under a neon sky
There’s no doubt that Helen Benigson is an artist whose future looks very bright — in every sense. With a first-class BA and MA from Slade under her belt, she has been seen in galleries across the UK with work which could be called “multimedia” — but it’s much more than that. Put rap, weightlifting, character-based performance, social media, and neon colours into the mix, and you’re only just starting to get there. Currently exhibiting at Tenderpixel in London, we caught up with Helen to find out how things are going.
How did your opening performance at Tenderpixel go?
HB: During the opening of the exhibition at Tenderpixel, we had a really dynamic, intense performance from a professional weightlifter, Evelyn, who carried out a two-hour intensive weight-training regime in front of a crowded audience. Sweat, body, power, noise — amazing!
I have been using the image of the female weightlifter repeatedly in my recent work. I enjoy the brutal performances from these women, who become scripted warriors within my digital and real sets of obsession, intimacy and corporeality. My next “weight-lifting” performance takes place on Saturday 2nd August at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where female weightlifters will be invited to lift weights, outside, amongst the public sculptures within the park, questioning our relationship to scale, sculpture, play and performance.
Who is Helen Benigson? Are there many Helen Benigsons? What about your alter-ego rapper, Princess Belsize Dollar? What’s the interrelationship between them and how do they manifest themselves in your work?
HB: Within my practice, I often use different protagonists or characters who become stand-ins for me — versions, surrogates or alter-egos. It is a way of compiling or layering different personalities or scripts thereby mirroring my existing, schizophrenic online profiles.
I am interested in how our histories can be tracked and analysed, our research expertised through the process of multiplicity. In my work, the dancers, weightlifters, weight-loss support group members et al are all pulsating profiles of self, open simultaneously in multiple browser windows.
Princess Belsize Dollar is one of these — a rapper, who appears in my videos and performances, and in real life too.
Hair and Leaves (Screenshot), Helen Benigson, 2011. Image c/o the artist
Your work mixes up rap, digital works, installation, and much more. Are we still placing too much emphasis on distinctions in art? Should anyone care about “form” or “media” any more?
HB: I am interested in the distribution as well as the production of these different formats. I am interested in the print being a version of the original video, but printed out as a physical object that can be touched. The distinctions are exciting, and I enjoy the chaos in revealing and concealing between different forms at different times.
Who or what influence your work? There’s a lot of extraordinary, bright, cut-and-paste in there which is evocative of many pop artists in the late 60s, but clearly also the fact that mass communication (certainly mass digital) culture now is much more visually expressive.
HB: Currently, Tinder, Ryan Trecartin, Brooke Candy, Chantal Akerman, Hannah Wike, Emma Hart and the Matisse cut-outs are all visual references and inspirations for me.
Pink Sushi Desert, Helen Benigson, 2014. Image c/o the artist
How do you consider the interplay between the “real” and the virtual, both in terms of your thinking about new works and also how they are performed?
HB: I am interested in the relationship between online bodies and ‘real-life’ locations, actual territory and virtual situations, as well as the visual and libidinal economies that connect these spaces.
For example, in my practice, weight is used as a metaphor for describing a type of ‘real’, suggesting actual materiality, a physical mass, but also something presented online, virtual and light. I think about weight as being both an object and an archive — something I can experiment with through continual reformulation and manipulation and which accrues new meaning in the process.
In your interview with the Saatchi magazine, you said that “Poker is also one of those things I love — along with roses, sushi, rappers, palm trees, the beach, soldiers, footballers and boys who play Fantasy Football”. You tend to use, think about, and work with, a huge variety of topics — both obviously and less obviously. What are the ways in which you build subjects and themes to use in your art?
HB: Often I layer, recycle and re-situate the same images as part of ongoing research into subject matter that is new. I think the practice is always growing through continual choreographing of these narratives, scripts, soundtracks and spaces. Thematically, the work grows intuitively through intense reading and research, so in some ways it is both a directorial and research-based practice.
Your work uses contemporary digital media such as GIFs, Vimeo, and Instagram. To call on Marshall McLuhan for a second, is there a general danger of the medium absorbing the message?
HB: To me, the more urgent question is how can we keep up with continually transforming mediums as well as messages?
What is your plan for global domination and how far through the plan are you?
HB: Not at all far, which is very worrying. By this stage, I would have at least hoped to be on a Vogue front cover!
For further information on Helen Benigson and her work, visit her website. Helen (as Helen Benigson and Princess Belsize Dollar) is @princessbelsize on Twitter.
“Helen Benigson: Late Night Supermarket Shopping Live” is showing at Tenderpixel until 07/06/14.
