26-04-2025
The forgotten genius who taught Damien Hirst and inspired Britart
In 1996 the artist Helen Chadwick's career was on the rise. In 1987 she became one of the first women to be nominated for the Turner prize. In 1994 she broke the Serpentine Gallery's attendance records with her exhibition Effluvia, which included what are still her two most famous works — Cacao, new that year, a slightly quease-inducing bubbling fountain of melted chocolate, and Piss Flowers, 1991-2, bronze casts of the oddly floral shapes made in the snow by first her, then her husband's, streams of urine.
A year later, her 1992-3 photograph series Wreaths to Pleasure — flowers carefully arranged in viscous liquids such as hair gel, bubble bath, oil, antiseptic cream and milk — went on display at the Museum
