Helena Doyle is a multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker and educator from Kildare, currently living between the UK and Ireland. She graduated with a BA from the National Film School of Ireland and a MA in Art & Media Practice from University of Westminster, London.
With a background in film, an interest in the viewer’s immersive experience led her to explore how this is connected to wellbeing. ‘Sanctuary’ is a major theme in her work and she aims to create spaces and experiences that encourage contemplation and aim to evoke a sense of awe in the viewer.She works across mediums including installation, sculpture, video, textiles, street theatre and land art. Helena explores and reimagines folk/bush crafts as a way to find the common, universal threads that bond us to each other and the land. She believes in crafting as a tool for healing and community building and facilitates workshops where participants create collective installations together.
She has over 15 years experience designing, producing, installing and touring large scale aerial sculptures to festivals and events including All Together Now (IE), Bestival (UK), Body & Soul (IE) and Latitude (UK). In 2021 she was commissioned to produce Whirl, a large-scale sculpture for Canary Wharf Summer Lights and the piece has since found a more permanent home at Devon Sculpture Park. In 2022 Helena was commissioned by Watermans Art Centre in London to create Superfluus a solo exhibition re-imagining folk crafts through new age waste streams.
Aside from The Woodland Symposium Helena has participated in land based residencies and exhibitions including SILVA by Lay of The Land (IE), Terra Nexus by Proposition Studios (UK) and Wunder Dusk by Surrey Arts and The National Trust (UK).
For Helena Doyle, the mobile is a tool for manifestation, a poetic gesture nurturing the saplings and dreaming the forest into being. On every residency, Helena has embedded herself in the forest environment, intervening directly with the materials of place: kokedama balls bring native saplings into the straight rows of Spruce, an elevated platform of logs, enables us to see higher and further, cordage made from Sitka Spruce roots serves as the material for the next mobile.
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