Dr. Helen Pynor | AU
“I’m often working in liminal zones. For example, a thread that I followed for quite a period of time was the ambiguity of the life-death boundary. I would do these detailed, tiny case studies that were empirically based, but they have this broader backdrop of a philosophical question behind them. It’s working at those scales that interests me as an artist that you can’t really do as freely as a scientist.”
Helen Pynor is an Artist and Researcher whose practice explores philosophically and experientially ambiguous zones, such as the life-death boundary, the inter-subjective nature of organ transplantation, and the animate-inanimate boundary in relation to prosthetics. Her work is informed by in-depth residencies in scientific and clinical institutions, for example The Francis Crick Institute, London; The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden; The Heart and Lung Transplant Unit, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney; and SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia, Perth; and cultural institutions for example The Australia Council for the Arts London Studio; Performance Space, Sydney; and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Pynor also frequently collaborates with members of the broader community whose embodied experiences connect with the themes of her work.
Pynor has completed a practice-based PhD at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney (Sculpture, Installation, Photography) and a Bachelor of Science (1st Class Hons) at Macquarie University, Sydney (Cell and Molecular Biology).
In 2012 Pynor received an Honorary Mention at the internationally prestigious Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria for her collaborative work The Body is a Big Place, exploring organ transplantation. She has received national awards in Australia including the Royal Bank of Scotland Emerging Artist Award (2009) and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award (jointly, 2008). She has been an ANAT Synapse Art-Science Residency fellow, recipient of an Australian University Postgraduate Award scholarship to support her PhD studies, and was awarded nine Australia Council for the Arts grants from 2010-2019.
Pynor has authored chapters for academic books, including On the emergent properties of death: When words fall apart in Performance and the Medical Body, eds Alex Mermikides and Gianna Bouchard (Bloomsbury Methuen, London, 2016). Pynor’s work is held in the collections of The Francis Crick Institute, London; Wellcome Collection, London; Royal Bank of Scotland; The Macquarie Bank Group, Sydney; The University of Sydney; Artbank (Australian Government contemporary art collecting agency); Gold Coast City Art Gallery, QLD; and private collections in France, Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore and Australia.
Pynor exhibits with Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney. She lives and works in Sydney and London.
Interview with Dr. Helen Pynor: Working at the intersection of art and science
