Helen Acklam

Since 2021, I have been working in the Garw Valley, Sth Wales, my family home and place of my childhood and adolescent experiences. I have been awarded funding to explore my lived experience of baby loss, Arts Council England, and research, Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol. 

Returning to the valley during the pandemic in 2021 without a plan, I found that my body already knew how to respond, and over time, to communicate the intimate, interwoven feelings of past and present.   Today my practice is fundamentally embodied and rooted in direct engagement with the already meaningful materials of this land - the earth, coal and rock.  

Working with living materials and site-specific processes has opened both forensic and spiritual connections to the land, revealing overlooked aspects of maternal subjectivity and the entanglement of grief, shame and belonging.  My work is grounded in this relict landscape, uncovering connections with my embodied experience and cultural narratives. 

I have exhibited widely in the UK and internationally in the US and Scandinavia, and  presented my 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 my embodied practice and collaborative working, I am currently developing a new initiative, (M)other Matters, a Working Research Group for bereaved mothers who are also artists (of any practice). This project will explore what it means to live with, in and alongside the complex affects of (m)othering as mothers without children, continuing my commitment to questioning the silence around maternal grief, the stigma of stillbirth and identity beyond loss.

If you are interested in this, please contact me at info@helenacklam.com. 

I grew up in Bridgend, Sth Wales and went to school in the Garw Valley, part of the South Wales Coalfield.  My school was opposite a working mine - neither of which exist today.  I left when I was 16 and returned in 2021. My practice, and first language,  fundamentally changed as a result.