Helle Helsner

Helle exhibits regularly nationally and internationally. Her bronze casting practice has resulted in collaborations with archaeologists, in Denmark and Ireland, ritual bronze casting in New Mexico alongside bronze casting residencies in Irish prisons on the Artist in Residence scheme though the Arts Council of Ireland. Exhibitions have included several solo shows, latest “Core” in O’Connell Gallery 2025 and selected group exhibitions, latest The Hunt Museum Open Call, Limerick dec 2025 and Desire Lines in the Lavit in 2022/Ballinglen Art Foundation Gallery 2023. A two women show complete with a publication of the same name. Helle has works in the Danish State Collection, in the OPW and the RTE Collection. She is a lecturer in Crawford College of Art and Design and is currently pursuing a PhD through Burren Art College in Co Clare on a MTU staff Scholarship. She lives and works in West Cork, Ireland

Statement

My practice concerns material ethics explored though line and matter. I am interested in the relationship between extractive practices, landscape, and material use. Drawing from prehistoric technology and storytelling, I examine how my bronze casting furnace can become the communal firepit from where objects and new material ethics may emerge.

Through drawing and sculpture , I look at Land as more than a geological point. I dive into the layers of the human and non-human, the history, historical and contemporary and the seen and unseen. I refer to the process and the making as a deep mapping of timeandplace. The disused mining landscape of Allihies on the Beara Peninsula has become my microcosm. Fractions and elements of the Land becomes solid matter in pencil, wax, clay or metal. Together line and matter form a relationship telling a particular story. A story of materials, land and memory.