Helen Gorrill

Central Paris exhibition on the life and work of Georges Bataille.

Exhibiting with Joseph Nechvatal, Cristina Romao, Alain Brendel and Philippe Breson.

Translated from the dossier de presse (please contact if you would like a full copy!) “For Helen Gorrill, the body is reduced to legs, or to be precise, to prostheses presented as sadomasochist imagery. Whereas for Georges Bataille the female body is one of the forms of The Other, her prostheses, as stigmata of mutilation, represent the lack, where pleasure penetrates. "You see, I am God" said the prostitute Mrs. Edwards, parting her legs to show her "open sore". Here, God would be in the gaping hole; and it's not for nothing that Helen Gorrill has worked intensively on the theme of biblical women. In other words, as she claims, a gaping hole to be filled in, or simply in need of being reinvented, with the support of fetishism and iconoclasm (drawings accompanying the sculpture represent "the assumption of Pope Pius IX", nude and bound/ tied up/tied down).”