Helen Acklam

Helen Acklam lives in Bristol and works at Spike Island Studios. She has received funding from Arts Council England to explore her lived experience of baby and child loss, and from the Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol, to support interdisciplinary research into her practice.

Since 2022, Helen has been working at the site of her baby’s grave in the Garw Valley, South Wales. Digging into the earth and into her past, she was able to excavate and express her disenfranchised grief, and the silence that surrounded her maternal experience. Working with living materials and site-specific processes opened both forensic and spiritual connections to the land, revealing overlooked aspects of maternal subjectivity and the entanglement of grief, shame and belonging. Helen’s work is grounded in the relict landscape where she grew up, uncovering connections between her embodied experience and cultural narratives.

Helen has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally in the US and Scandinavia. She has presented her work and research at universities, arts organisations and symposiums – most recently as a speaker at Grief & Labour in and Out of Motherhood (MAC, Birmingham) and as a member of an Artistic Research Circle (NSU, Denmark and Finland).

Building on her embodied practice and collaborative workshops, Helen is developing a new initiative, (M)other Matters, a Working Research Group for bereaved mothers who are also artists. This project will explore what it means to live with, in and alongside the complex affects of (m)othering as mothers without children, continuing Helen’s commitment to questioning the silence around maternal grief, the stigma of stillbirth, and identity beyond loss.