On October 15, Kelly Toepfer Art in conjunction with Barry Stern Gallery will present Helen’s latest exhibition The Angel & The Snake

Excerpt from Artists Notes on the works:

"In these works I have had to return to the garden. Through these works I constantly use the metaphor of the snake in Adam and Eve’s garden of oblivion where they were thrown into the mythical stage or opening act of mans beginnings according to the Christian belief.
This fable gives no preamble to how they should deal with their emotional responses or even got to where they were when faced with them.  In this fable which has been given so much importance in the foundations of what today’s western culture is built upon, there is an embarrassing lack of integrity and sensibility. The interpretation dictated to us from this fable is in fact an insult to the inherent intelligence of human beings.
There was nothing behind them.  A void of experiences which is a very warped concept for us to found the future Western culture. 
The irony is that while Adam and Eve are certainly not tainted by former emotional baggage they do represent the stupidity and ignorance of our present direction on a world scale where we fail to learn from history in order to change our future.
For example we know what causes war, we know what causes starvation, we know what causes poverty, we know what brings economies down, and yet we march along obliviously as if in the garden with no former remembrances or emotional experience.   Is this the real significance of the Adam and Eve myth? ... (read more)

The Angels Lament
“And when we return to road and noise, we land in the place beyond the walls of the prison that captures their souls.   The difference is that our hearts are free and land for fleeting moments only to service the reality that binds our flesh to the mother’s earth.  For thank the heavens for her reality for it is in the kitchen of her house we met whilst attending to the mending of darkness and greed that sews the reality of our society together.

Sometimes when we land we fall and crash and become damaged.  It is all we can do to race to the side of our fellow in strife for we know too well the poison of mediocrity and the acid of its slow death that eats away at us from inside.  We are not equipped to deal with this destructive disease that renders our life soul-less.

It steals our life.  It robs and rapes us like a virus.  It runs through everything and everyone.  It is inescapable and has permeated our children.   For they are in grave danger now.  We must hurry - time is nought the last flutter of a moth. 

The resources are low, we are loosing them quickly.   Please someone, please hold on.  Don't let go for they will all be lost forever; gone to a hell on earth that they already taste on a daily scale.   For they are learning to live with it.  They have no option. They are evolving into benignity.  And this surely be the most cruel fate that God can deliver to us for we aspire for it to be so” 
Norton©2002

 



image left: Helen Norton in Vanuatu Port Villa studio

Media Release
Narratives of Works
Exhibition Invitation Sydney

Exhibition Invitation Perth
The Angels Heart - Essay Helen Norton