There’s a Hole in the Sky Part II: Listening to James Baldwin (2016) sites itself in the East End of the capital, against the backdrop of London’s Docklands and the Caribbean island of Barbados, both of which are intrinsically linked to the sugar trade.

The film centres on an imagined conversation with writer James Baldwin, an American novelist, playwright and activist whose writings explore intracies of racial, sexual and class distinctions in Western societies.

This work builds on Helen Cammock’s interest in failing colonial industries, histories, storytelling and the excavation, re-interpretation and re-presentation of lost, unheard and buried voices. Her artistic practice employs moving image, photography, found texts, poetry, spoken word, song, performance, printmaking and installation. Having worked as a social worker before becoming an artist, she remains concerned with structural oppression and inequality across the communities she saw during this time.

Her work has recently been screened as part of the Serpentine Cinema Series and Tate Artists Moving Image Screening Programme. She has written for Photoworks and Aperture magazine and was shortlisted for the Bridport poetry prize in 2015. Her work has been published in The Photographers’ Gallery journal Loose Associations and in an artist book and vinyl 12” Moveable Bridge with Bookworks, London. She was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2018 and is shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2019.

With special thanks to the artist. John Hansard Gallery’s Digital Array programme is supported by the Barker-Mill Foundation.