Helena Hunter will join us at the Centre for Expanded Poetics to discuss her recent project, Algae Ecologies, which investigates the creative and aesthetic possibilities of poetic practice to explore the multiple scales, temporalities, and perspectives that algae ecologies elicit. Focusing on cross-disciplinary research with marine scientists, she will present insights from a recent residency at the Scottish Association for Marine Science. The residency involved specialist training in marine sampling on research vessels, analyzing water samples using lab and computational techniques, and learning how to describe, count, and identify organisms, including microalgae, using microscopy. During this time, Helena conducted snorkel surveys with marine ecologists in kelp forests along the coast of West Scotland. From this experience, she developed experimental methods of ‘poetic sampling’ and ‘poetic field noting’, writing in the field and lab alongside marine scientists. The methods generated from this research resulted in a series of visual and poetic artworks, which she will share during the presentation.
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Helena Hunter works at the intersections of visual art, poetry, film, and performance. She holds a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and is currently pursuing an AHRC-funded PhD in Critical and Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University in partnership with the University of Warwick. She lives and works in London, UK. Her practice merges fieldwork and laboratory studies with archival research and collaborative projects with scientists to investigate the critical ecologies of environmental change. She was recently a poet in residence at the Scottish Association of Marine Science and collaborates with sound artist Mark Peter Wright in her practice, Matterlurgy.
Helena was an Artist Associate for the Art, Technology, Society programme at Delfina Foundation and has been nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Awards for Visual Artists. Her work has been showcased internationally at venues such as the Wellcome Collection, Gasworks, Arts Catalyst, Tate Modern, ICA, LUX, and Whitechapel Gallery (UK), Onassis Stegi (GR), Bòlit Contemporary Arts Centre, Medialab Matadero (ES), and Titanik Gallery (FI).
Her publications include contributions to Bunker: Stories and Poems from a Nuclear Age, Five Leaves Press, Ed. Sarah Jackson & Daniel Cordle, 2024; The Contemporary Journal, Ed. Canan Batur, 2022; MAP Magazine, Ed. Daniela Cascella, 2022; Reliquiae, Eds. Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton, 2020; MAI Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture, Eds. Rebecca Coleman, Tara Page, Helen Palmer, 2019; Alterity, Ed. Richard Skelton, 2019; and Something Other, Eds. Mary Paterson, Maddy Costa, Diana Damian Martin, 2018.