Helen Chadwick: A Retrospective accompanies the major exhibition of the same name at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. This first comprehensive survey of Chadwick’s work celebrates the singular vision of an artist deeply engaged with ideas of transience, identity, and particularly the construction of female identity. 
 
At the time of her untimely death in 1996, at just 42, Chadwick had already made a significant impact on contemporary art, attracting attention from feminists, writers, and fellow artists alike. Her early work of the late 1970s explored the social conditions of the everyday, from the kitchen to the welfare office, while the 1980s saw her interrogate the ways in which the female self is shaped by cultural and social structures. Later pieces confronted themes of death and decay, yet were rendered in forms of striking beauty.
 
Known for her controversial use of materials and subject matter, Chadwick described the emotional effect of her work as “gorgeously repulsive, exquisitely fun, dangerously beautiful.” This retrospective brings together many of her most celebrated works, including Viral Landscapes, intimate photographic studies of cells from her own body; Piss Flowers, delicate sculptures cast from the depressions left by urination in snow; and Cacao, a provocative fountain of bubbling chocolate. A definitive resource, this monograph captures the imagination, ingenuity, and enduring influence of Helen Chadwick’s practice.