b. 1955, UK; lives and works in London
1977-79 St Martin's School of Art, London
1974-77 Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London
Helen David is a London-based visual artist, textile designer and founder of the ground-breaking design house English Eccentrics. Having established her earlier career in fashion-textiles, with her garments worn by the likes of Prince and Mick Jagger, she now works predominantly in fine art. Textiles remain Helen’s central medium, but taking a critical step back from producing clothing, she now interrogates the role of textiles in our social fabric.
Cosy ‘craft’ textile objects are subverted, destabilising their positioning as innocuous, feminised media. Pincushions are transformed through scale and subject matter, from soft souvenirs into sites of social inquiry.