Helen Birnbaum’s sculptural practice operates within a space of tension, where fragility and resilience coexist, and where the boundaries between the human condition and the natural world begin to dissolve. Working across both monumental installations and more intimate forms, her pieces act as quiet yet urgent reflections on contemporary life, drawing attention to the precarious balance that underpins both society and environment.
Rooted in an acute awareness of the present moment, Birnbaum approaches themes of consumer culture, digital dependency and environmental neglect with a questioning, almost forensic gaze. Her use of ceramic alongside discarded, everyday materials becomes a deliberate and poetic choice, embedding the very remnants of modern life into works that challenge the systems that produced them. The result is a body of work that feels both materially grounded and conceptually expansive.
Her work has been presented within significant global and institutional contexts, including Shed Salty Tears during the Venice Biennale 2025 as part of Art for the Planet, and TERRA FIRMA Leaky Boat, exhibited at COP26 in Glasgow and later at the Glastonbury Festival’s Arts Science programme. This dialogue between art, science and public discourse continues through her inclusion in exhibitions at institutions such as the Gordon Pathology Museum in London, the World Museum Liverpool, and ARTBOX Basel, as well as international presentations in Athens and São Paulo.
Recognition of Birnbaum’s practice extends beyond exhibition, with her work entering permanent collections including National Museums Liverpool and Liverpool University, alongside her receipt of the Victoria and Albert Museum and Morley Gallery Ceramics Prize. Whether encountered at scale or in more intimate form, her sculptures prompt a reconsideration of how we live, consume and coexist, offering a compelling meditation on the vulnerabilities of both humanity and the ecosystems we inhabit.
Are you self-taught, or did you undertake formal artistic training?
A few years exploring clay in Adult Education resulted in a BTEC Design Crafts level 3 with Distinction, SCOLA, Surrey in 2008. As soon as I touched clay I knew that is the material that I had to explore forever, but, unsure of what steps the next steps were in my love of ceramic I started to look for a new adult education course I when I moved to Lancashire – there were none close by but the University of Central Lancashire rose to the challenge of accepting me on their Masters in Ceramic Art and Design in 2000. This changed my life completely and a few years later I became the resident ceramic artist with Liverpool Hope University. These experiences laid the pathway to a career in ceramics where I make and exhibit regularly throughout the world. My period of time at Liverpool Hope University started my exploration into microbial forms and disease transmission. I ended up at Liverpool John Moores University in 2021 where I got a Masters in Art in Science with Distinction. A long journey from my original English degree from Cardiff University.
How would you define your visual language or conceptual approach?
A first thought is the inspiration for the work (often scribbled in a note book by the side of my bed) and then I start to manipulate the clay until I reach the desired form. This thought is inspired by things I have read, seen or heard. News about changes in modern society are a continual inspiration. Also, I often use reclaimed materials and when I hunt in local scrap yards, I choose materials that I am attracted to, this may be their shape, their colour, the texture of the discarded metal or how they inspire me. Occasionally I imagine what they were once used for, or where they came from, but usually I am just attracted to the form as it presents itself to me I that moment. My visual language is created by my fascination with the modern world and the form of the rubbish this world discards.
Can you describe your creative process from conception to completion?
I always hand build, starting off by wrapping thin sheets of clay around formers made from cardboard tubes and plastic pots. Once the clay is leather hard, and this basic shape has formed, I attach different pieces as needed to create the forms and often decorate the sculptures with found metal objects. I believe that the old metal objects, often rusty, add a quirkiness and character to the pieces that clay alone could not do. The truth I find comes from the sculpture that eventually emerges from my initial idea and not from the materials themselves.
I explore a range of different materials, whilst engaging viewers in a conversation about the ecological crises that face the world. The sculptures are in part made of the rubbish we discard and become symbols of the way we treat our precious environments. Through assemblage and hand building methods hand-building techniques I create the sculptures, and they often incorporate found materials such as rusty industrial metal pieces, coiled telephone wires and found objects. Aluminium, steel and copper waste found in local scrap yards and recycling centres in the North West is also used.
Does narrative, symbolism, or storytelling play a role within your work?
The ritual of ceramic making provides me with a narrative and focus whilst I am making the object. I always used to describe myself as a story teller in clay and I think that persists. I have always been attracted to the feel of ceramic on my skin and without this contact I do not know that I would be able to create. It is this more than narrative or symbolism that drives me.
Which artists have most influenced you historically or contemporarily and why?
I am influenced by the pressures of contemporary society than anything else, but I have found great meaning in the forms and thinking of Modernist architects. I am thinking of figures such as Oscar Neimeyer, Eileen Grey and Lubetkin. Their belief that form follows function, the rejection of ornamentation and use of different materials has found its home in much of my work and will continue to do so.
What personal, cultural, or environmental influences shape your practice?
In 2024 I was resident ceramic artist at Blackpool & Fylde School of Arts, 2024, where I completed Shed Salty Tears, a ceramic installation, to bring attention to our polluted oceans and beaches. It was the pollution on the famous local beach that inspired me. I had the opportunity to exhibit the work during the Venice Biennale, 2025, which was an opportunity I could not miss to exhibit to a wider European audience. The fact that it was in the famously sinking Venice added an extra relevance to my exhibition.
In those first days when we were seeing desperate people trying to cross oceans to find new homes, I started to build 150 life size ceramic hands in TERRA FIRMA Leaky Boat. Each time I have an opportunity to exhibit or communicate I do it in a slightly different way. In Halifax during Refugee & Compassion week, at the Daresbury Science Festival, 2023 all the 150 ceramic hands and the rusty boat was exhibited. This major work was also exhibited at Cop26 in Glasgow, and many times on-line. At the Glastonbury Festival in 2021 I was asked to provide a large image of this work to display outside the Art Science Tent. The image was a more practicable solution to exhibiting to such a large crowd of people. In 2023 the National Grid and the think tank Sustainability First used images of TERRA FIRMA Leaky Boat in a ground-breaking report about the impact of climate change on our sustainable use of resources because they were communicating with a large audience on-line.
Where is your studio based, and how does the space inform your creativity?
I am based in Lancashire in a 1960’s new town and the first installation I ever made was about this town. https://concretecontagion.wordpress.com/ When I was completing my Masters in Art Science at Liverpool John Moores university I explored the effect of the Covid pandemic on the local population in ceramic, film and photography. The film provided is of me installing my ceramic hands outside the local church to symbolise the effect of the disease on the community.
Do you have any rituals or rhythms that anchor your studio practice?
Alchemy is the pursuit of transforming a base material into something more perfect or valuable. Ceramic is such an ancient base material associated with domestic uses, what we drink from, what we eat our food on, that to transform it into art is in itself a form of alchemy. The alchemy of form therefore describes the process of refining, perfecting, and giving new shape to one’s being through dedicated labour. As much as I love the clay and the feel of it on my hands, the truth comes from my first idea inspired by thoughts I may have about a range of social issues. But the main aim of my work has always been to communicate these ideas in the most accessible, and even, humorous way possible.
What bodies of work or projects are you currently developing?
Ceramic is the material that I will continue to use and explore, but after many years of making large scale installations with multiples of the same forms I am now making series of smaller, more reflective works. I am currently working on work called Cracked Myths in which I explore the connections between the end of ancient civilisations and the instability of our own. A panorama of ancient Greek goddesses/gods and monsters will be set against cracked Romanesque architecture, and in the middle, a large screen-printed earthquake cracks will appear. figures but from a modern point of view. I have started sharing information and images on my Instagram site.
https://www.instagram.com/helenbirnbaumceramics/
Where can collectors encounter or acquire your work?
Contact me on helenbirnbaumceramics.com
https://www.instagram.com/helenbirnbaumceramics/
