Helen Beard: interview

Helen Beard’s striking and marvellously simplified, flat colour images, take you by surprise in a number of ways. The fresh colour forms pack a satisfying punch even before the viewer has undergone the gradual realisation that the paintings portray a varied range of sexual acts.

The exhibition True Colours, curated by Damien Hirst at his Newport Street Gallery (opened in 2015 to display Hirst’s expansive collection to the public), brings together three female painters, Helen Beard, Sadie Laska and Boo Saville, whose practice encompasses interestingly different usages of colour, form and subject. For those who have not visited Newport Street, the gallery spaces are cathedral-like in scale and use the idea of a white cube to maximum effect. There is room to view every work from a good, airy distance, and while taking a first look at this exhibition, it is impossible not to be astonished at the immersive colours of the works.

Helen Beard. Cyssan, 2017. Oil on canvas, 240 x 200 cm. ® Helen Beard. Courtesy Newport Street Gallery.

True Colours: Helen Beard, Sadie Laska and Boo Saville
Newport Street Gallery, London
6 June – 9 September 2018

Interview by MK PALOMAR
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY