26/05/25
Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures
The Hepworth Wakefield
17 May – 27 October 2025
Ascending the stairs into the galleries at the Hepworth Wakefield, one is met by the sweet, cloying smell of melted chocolate; turning into the gallery, the culprit is revealed – a large fountain bubbling over with the brown confection: a real-life Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. And yet, while my senses are activated and engaged at this level of childhood memory, this is not – despite the number of (appropriate) engagement activities suggested at child-height – an exhibition for pre-pubescents. It oozes raw sexuality at every turn, and the scent of sweaty bodies moving rapturously is conjured just as strongly as the chocolate – described by the artist as “a pool of primal matter, sexually indeterminate, in a perpetual state of flux”1 – and just as strongly again as the imagined smell that accompanies Carcass in the next gallery, a two-metre-tall glass tower filled with rotting vegetable remains (and, on my visit, topped rather beautifully with a bunch of magenta rhubarb. Did you know Yorkshire was host to an annual rhubarb festival? No, me neither – but I digress …). The artist behind this sensory onslaught is Helen Chadwick (1953-96), and this is her first major retrospective in more than two decades.
Read my full review here