Helen Geier is the current artist in residence at The Church Gallery, in conjunction with the Art Angels and Curtin University. She arrived in early August and will be living in the gallery’s residency unit until early November. Whilst in WA she has already travelled to the Pilbara region for two weeks before settling in to her joint residency with Curtin University, where she is developing works from the Pilbara trip and working with students for six weeks. Helen is also working on a major print project in Canberra this year, which has included a very special print edition for The Church Gallery Art Angels.

Helen’s residency with The Church Gallery is culminating with an exhibition of work, some that she has brought with her from her studio in Braidwood, NSW, and others that she has produced here in Perth. These new works include a fabulous free standing screen, one of two that will be featured in her exhibition.

Her work over the past decade has been investigating vision and perspectival systems, bringing together Western and Eastern ideas of vision and beauty. The resulting artworks are beautifully layered images evoking different cultural ways of interpreting what we see. Repeating imagery include an archway and a sensuous tree, however many works appear abstract, with floating shapes diffused with light.

The Canberra Museum and Gallery held a major survey of Helen’s work in 2000. Peter Haynes, the director, wrote the following about Helen’s work in the accompanying catalogue:

“The art of Helen Geier speaks of a finely honed and constantly inquiring aesthetic intellect. It is an art marked by strident polarities where the metaphysical and the physical coexist. The role and placement of each pictorial device are in ongoing active dialogue with all other devices present in the picture with the viewer and with the artist herself.”

Helen has work in many prestigious collections here and overseas, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, National Library of Australia, Newcastle Art Gallery, Holmes a Court Collection, Parliament House Collection ACT and the New England Regional Art Museum, who recently purchased the entire Dissolving View survey exhibition.

Helen will giving a talk at the gallery on Tuesday 15 October at 6pm

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