Woman UP! Podcast by Desperate Artwives

I am a member of the Desperate Artwives an arts collective set up by Amy Dignam. In 2019 I was invited to record a podcast for Women Up! and was interviewed by Susan Merrick.

Maternal Art Magazine – MAM a new publication created at home during lockdown

Maternal Art Magazine – MAM is a new art magazine focusing on artists from around the world producing work about the maternal. The first issue, Stay At Home due out in June 2020 is a response by 24 artists to their experiences of working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The magazine aims...

Mother / Daughter

Mother/Daughter is a book that has been created through mobile phone text conversations with Helen’s mother. Helen wanted to create a book that documented and recorded her mothers prenatal and birth experiences.

Helen Sargeant – Maternal Journal

I had a go at the Maternal Journal guides and they are so much fun, I highly recommend you try them out too and they are all FREE to access online.

Womb Room Tomb

Thinking of my pre-menopausal body and how this has had an affect on my emotions. A sense of loss, sadness, change, fear of the future and how to fill my time as the children grow more independent.

Maternal Journal Todmorden & Hebden Bridge

Maternal Journal involves a series of creative workshops that explore the history and practice of journaling and the potential to promote positive mental health and wellbeing.

Maternal Journal Guide

I have created a free downloadable journaling template - "Mark making to capture connection between mother and baby" for the award winning Maternal Journal project produced by artist and midwife Laura Godfrey Isaacs. 

Body Image & Self Portraits at Hoot

In the autumn term of 2018 I worked at Hoot in huddersfield facilitating a series of workshops about self portraiture fusing drawing and mixed media to help promote mental health and wellbeing. This interview was published via the Hoot blog as part of Mental Health Awareness Week. Body Image &...

The M Word

‘The M word’ exhibition curated by Amy Dignam of Desperate Art Wives. A group exhibition of visual and material representation of concepts that revolve around the maternal experience, motherhood and maternal mental health.

She was pregnant: mobile phone drawings

A series of drawings made using my my mobile phone. Playing with ideas and concepts to express a range of feelings in relation to the state of being pregnant.

A Silent Earthquake

A film going back in time to when I became a mother and was dealing with post-natal depression.  

The Creative Birth Programme: BODY

I was invited to deliver a drawing workshop for pregnant women about the visualisation of the pregnant body as part of the Creative Birth Programme. The workshop involved exploring the pregnant body through dance, yoga and drawing. I worked  in collaboration with midwife, artist, activist Laura Godfrey Isaac; and yoga teacher...

PLAY AWAY

Ten Days at The Mothership, a collaborative arts residency by Helen Sargeant & Naoise Sargeant July 27th- 5th August 2017, Dorset, UK In the summer me and my youngest son Naoise (aged 8) spent 10 days at The Mothership, a beautiful straw bale live/work studio deep in the Dorset countryside....

Readings from M(other) & Son

Readings from M(other) & Son, performed at We Are Resident Exhibition, Islington Mill Project Space, Sunday 30th October 2016.      

M(other) & Son: arts residency to Finland blog

In September 2016 me and my son spent 14 days as artists in residence at Takahuhti Artcenter, Tampere, Finland, supported by Nicola Smith’s We Are Resident project and funded by the Arts Council.  I posted writing and images each day throughout the duration of our residency on the M(other) & Son blog.  

M(other) & Son

A two week collaborative research residency between Helen Sargeant and her son Naoise Sargeant at Takahuhti Artcenter, Tampere, Finland, supported by Nicola Smith’s We Are Resident project and funded by the Arts Council. In September 2016 I spent two weeks with my youngest son Naoise (age 7) taking part in a collaborative arts residency to...

M(other) & Son: Finland smart phone drawings

Drawings made in collaboration with my youngest son on my smart phone during the M(other) & Son residency to Tampere, Finland.  

Mummy’s Tummy

Me and my youngest son Naoise (aged six) played a drawing game in a book. He drew babies in the tummy’s of my mummy’s and I drew babies in the tummy’s of his mummy’s.   

Dust to Bread

A participatory arts project delivered on behalf of Artist As Mother As Artist, an Arts Council funded exhibition curated by Tracey Kershaw and Sam Rose. I worked together with the curators and two groups of parents, their children and a group of women to bake bread from the dust in...

M(other) & Sons

A series that plays with making collaborative composite drawings by me and my two sons. I bring together opposing elements, marks, motifs and characters from each of our drawing practices to explore my own maternal identity and the relationship my children hold with me.

Playground drawings

The line that begins a journey, a game, play. You encourage me to follow and trace the lines that you have made. I twist and turn on your line. We laugh together. The line that connects me to you. An umbilical line.

The fountain

A series of drawings about the female body produced throughout the autumn of 2015. Thinking about the body as container, lactation, sexuality, fertility. Abundant milk and being drained of milk. The cervix opening and closing. Connectivity.    

Self Portraits as Mother

A series of photographic self portraits that attempt an alternative view to idealised images of mother.

Ma Ma/ Boo Boo

The film utilises 215 intimate family photographs and home video footage taken by the artist, together with autobiographical prose that weaves a journey through Helen's thoughts, feelings and experiences of breastfeeding.

M(other) Stories

"Autobiographical writing is juxtaposed with photographs taken at home and during the school run using my smart phone camera. Photographs record the ever shifting, transitory time I share with my family. There are shadow portraits of me and my son playing, of my son sleeping, intimate observations of his body...

Her Family

Playing with embedding my children's drawings into my own, thinking about the body of the mother and the child, gender, sexuality, nurture and protection.

The egg, the womb the head and the moon

  “The egg, the womb, the head and the moon” www.eggwombheadmoon.com,  has been created to show existing work and research-driven practice about the maternal by the Mewe arts collective in response to the title. The site includes documentation of visual art work, video, sound, performance and texts by members of Mewe, including contextual dialogue...
Latest entries

Intergenfem

Milk on Rocks, 2013, Film shown as part of Intergenfem a group show curated by Amy Dingam and Katy Howe of Desperate Artwives as part of the FiliA Conference in London. FiliA 2017, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL. Saturday 14th October 11am – 5pm. Sunday 15th October 10am- 4pm.  

The milk and the blood

8th -22nd March 2013: Ebor Studios, Littleborough Opening Friday, 8th March 6-8pm

Birth: Party Surprise

Birth: Party Surprise (2013) are a series of pencil and ink drawings that use public images of You Tube birth videos together with my personal experiences of giving birth.

M(other) Icon image included in ” Straight outta vagina” by Laura Godfrey Isaacs

Image from M(other) Icons series included in ” Straight outta vagina” – how depictions of violence abuse in Western art, media and culture can be seen to influence and perpetuate the incidence of ‘obstetric violence’ in maternity care.” by Laura Godfrey Isaacs, published in MIDIRS Midwifery Digest, March 2018.

The Pregnant Archive

I presented a talk about my arts practice in relation to the representation of the pregnant body, pregnancy testing and 1970’s performance arts practice at The Pregnant Archive Symposium, Birkbeck University.  I am developing a collaborative project with Jesse Olszynko-Gryn a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow based in the Department of History and Philosophy at The University...

Motherhood & Metamorphosis

Delighted to be showing A Silent Earthquake,  Film, 2017 together with Mama, Digital Drawing Tryptich 2017 as part of this group exhibition Motherhood & Metamorphosis curated by Jill Moore McKeith at Lansdown Gallery Stroud. Opens Tuesday 7th November- Saturday 11th November 2017. Opening times: 10am- 3pm daily.

Mama

A series of digital collages thinking about how memories are drawn and contained within the body. Memories of intense, exhausting,  mothering and how that made me feel.

Body of drawings made to fund PLAY AWAY residency

I created this series of drawings as part of a crowd funding initiative to help raise money to cover the expenses of me and my youngest son’s PLAY AWAY residency at The Mothership .

Mum’s the word

Taydellinen ympyra

Mother Art: text by Saara Sillanpää and Helen Sargeant, article, Pages 22- 25, Tampere Arts Association Magazine.

Live Art and Motherhood, A Study Room Guide on Live Art and the Maternal

Brood Issue 4: Riding The Reindeer

Tampere sanitary towel drawing

Made whilst caring and collaborating  with my son during the M(other) & Son arts residency n Tampere, Finland. I recently found this in my box of documents and art work in the studio, and really liked it as I felt it captured the fleeting nature of our time together in Tampere. Art made with a...

“New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable)

Illustration of Helen Sargeant, Man Sized, Digital Collage, 2014 included in Eti Wade’s paper; Maternal Art Practices: In Support of New Maternalist Aesthetic Forms.