HELEN BODYCOMB MOSAICS

Space Merkin, Helen Bodycomb,marble, fake fur & cardboard, 2019       Space Merkin is a whimsical piece made from tesserae and is in turn a tessera, from the installation 'The Material and The Immaterial'. I made it whilst doing my PhD and it is a personal favourite. It now hangs as my personal avatar above my side of the bed, alongside my husband's inflatable moose, which hangs above his side.
World Within, World Without, Helen Bodycomb, Venetian glass smalti, grante & slate, 2010       World Within, World Without was commissioned by The Victorian State Government in 2010, as a memorial to 'The Forgotten Australians'. It is now within the collection of the City of Melbourne, in a prominent riverside location at a park called Birrarung Marr in inner Melbourne. 'The Forgotten Australians' is the name given to children who were raised in state care, and there were more than 100,000 of them in Victoria alone. Some were Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families under the assimilation policy, others were orphaned or abandoned, some were sent to Australia from the UK and other European countries following WWII. Many were abused, most were neglected by their 'carers' and the state. World Within, World Without uses 1,000 inlaid wattle (Australian flower) blossoms in an arrangement mirroring the stellar and planetary constellation above the state of Victoria at the very moment of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's National Apology to The Forgotten Australians at 11 am on 16 November, 2009.
Nest, Helen Bodycomb, slate, Ventian glass smalti & marble, 2013       This is still one of my personal favourites. I quarried the slate from a hole in the ground close to my house in central Victoria, and split it down to paper thin slices. I laid these slices on edge to describe the impossibly fragile twiggy threads of this little wren's nest I found in my garden.
Now the work is in the collection of my solicitor in Melbourne, a gift after he sorted out some problems for me ;)
Synergy, Helen Bodycomb, Christine Baines, Rhonda McGuiness, Ruth Maclaren, Louise Marson, Christine Nixon, Amanda Tattam and Judith Watson., mixed media, 2021       Pandemic life has many unpredictable twists and turns. It’s hard to imagine, but sometimes being forced to be separated makes people even more determined to do things together. This was the case in April 2020 when a group of Victorians mosaic artists decided they wouldn’t let COVID stop them from making mosaics and then working together towards an exhibition. Many had been to Italy together with Helen Bodycomb to study mosaic art in 2017 and 2019 so already felt a special bond. Synergy resulted from this process, an installation of 450 individual vignettes expressing the experience of being alone, together.
Pandemic Relic, Helen Bodycomb, bronze, 2020, collection of the artist       Pandemic Relic is designed to be found ... later ... much later.