Helen Kilby Nelson
Helen Kilby Nelson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Warwickshire whose assemblage works layer drawing, text, paint and textile to explore identity, memory and social systems.
Overview
Practice Timeline
2016 – 2022 | Socially Engaged Practice
Helen Kilby Nelson’s early practice centred on socially engaged and participatory projects exploring housing, inequality and community voice. Through collaboration, dialogue and workshops, these works examined how social systems shape everyday life and how creative processes can facilitate conversation, connection and collective agency within communities.
2022 – 2023 | Reflection and Archive
Following a period of illness, Kilby Nelson began revisiting earlier projects, research and documentation. This period of reflection opened a renewed engagement with archives, fragments of past work and personal material, leading toward a more studio-based practice.
2023 – Present | Assemblage of Lived Systems
Kilby Nelson’s current work centerson mixed media assemblage. Working primarily on paper, she combines drawing, paint, text and textile materials to construct layered surfaces that hold fragments of research, documentation and lived experience. These works explore memory, interruption and the ways individual lives intersect with wider social and institutional systems.
Helen Kilby Nelson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Stratford-upon-Avon whose practice explores the intersections of identity, health, policy and place. Her work draws on lived experience and research to examine how social systems shape everyday life.
Earlier in her practice she developed socially engaged and participatory projects through collaboration, dialogue and community-based processes. These works addressed issues such as housing, marginalisation and the structures of care and neglect that people must navigate within contemporary society.
Since 2023 her practice has increasingly moved toward a studio-based approach centred on mixed media assemblage. Working primarily on paper, she combines drawing, paint, text and textile materials to create layered surfaces that hold fragments of research, documentation and personal reflection. This shift marks a move away from earlier digital modes of working toward a more tactile and materially driven process.
Drawing on materials from earlier projects and personal archives, these works bring together image, language and texture to explore memory, interruption and the ways experience becomes recorded and reconstructed. Through assemblage she revisits fragments of past work and lived experience, allowing them to be reconsidered within a slower, reflective studio practice.
Connect with Me
I welcome inquiries, collaborations, and your thoughts on my work. Feel free to reach out—your insights and support mean the world to me.