Mosaic Artist Helen Bodycomb
Transient Nature | Natura Mutevole is a group exhibition bringing together the works of visual artists Dr Helen Bodycomb PhD (Australia) and Joanna Kessel MA RCA (Scotland, United Kingdom). The artists first met at Ravenna Mosaico in 2011 and immediately established a creative dialogue that spanned continents and occasional encounters in Italy. It is therefore fitting that their first major joint exhibition is being held in Ravenna. In this exhibition, both artists reflect on the arrangement of objects and combine observation with imagination. The Ravenna Contemporary Mosaic Biennial 2025, which features the works of the great modernist Marc Chagall, whose work spanned a wide range of media, provides an interesting basis for experimentation.
Transient Nature explores the fluid tensions between time, memory and imagination, simultaneously engaging with and challenging the conventions of mosaic, painting and sculpture. Through a dynamic interplay of materials – including hand-drawn glass yarns, glass enamels, latex, cement, resin, oil paint and synthetic fur – Bodycomb and Kessel have created a series of multimedia installations that explore some of the restless and changing characteristics of the life around us.
MOSAICISM – THINKING IN MOSAIC
In Mosaicism – Thinking in Mosaic, Bodycomb draws on her experience as a visual artist and her ground-breaking research, to explain the human urge to ‘make special’. This intuitive act of assembling small, like parts, is one where the act of making is as important as the artefact made.
REVIEWS
“Mosaicism: Thinking in Mosaic is a lovely and lyrical meditation on both the dynamic development of a classical artform and the fundamental human desire to create and make a mark.”
CATE KENNEDY, author of The World Beneath, Dark Roots and Sing and Don’t Cry (Australia)
“What an amazing book! Helen Bodycomb breaks new ground with a book on the philosophy of mosaic making. If you don’t know what mosaic is, you must read this book. And if you are passionate about mosaics, you must devour it!”
RENÉE ANTOINE MALAVAL, author and publisher of Mosaïque: 80 artistes contemporains and Mosaique Magazine (France)
“The book is beautifully written and presented. I love the little details like the spacing between letters, words, and lines, echoing the interstices between tesserae. Italian translations follow each English section and, along with them, more images, including some of Helen’s work and photos of interesting sights taken during her time in Italy”
RHONA DUFFY, Mosaic and Glass magazine
Read review here…
Download flyer about the book in English.
Download flyer about the book in Italian.
Video reel showing fabrication of Ballam Ballam, a work celebrating the Macleay’s Swallowtail Butterfly, fabrication by Helen Bodycomb and Pyrenees Quarry, video by Tamara Froud.
Video reel showing fabrication of Brachiopod (420 million year old fossil) in glass smalti, inlaid into basalt boulder, fabrication by Helen Bodycomb and Pyrenees Quarry, video by Tamara Froud.
HELEN BODYCOMB MOSAICS
Dr Helen Bodycomb is well known as one of Australia’s few contemporary artists working primarily in mosaic. She is widely professionally active; exhibiting, fulfilling commissions, guest teaching and presenting her work nationally and internationally.
Helen has been pivotal to re-defining mosaic as an art form in Australia, having initially trained as painter (Victoria College, 1988-1990 and Monash University, 1993-94), also working under Maestro Giulio Candussio in Spilimbergo, Italy in 2001.
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