About the work

Helva XH-834 is a reimagining of the already spaceship-like Canada Water Library as the hull of a cargo spacecraft. Canada Water Library was designed by CZWG architects and opened in 2011 as a flagship library for Southwark Council and its regeneration of Rotherhithe former dock areas. I am interested in the use of libraries as civic icons – as public buildings symbolising community learning and world-building, instrumentalised to attract private investment and development. In sci-fi, libraries appear as huge repositories, sites of contention, or places of refuge. Spacecraft represent space travel and transportation: often colonial or imperial, sometimes liberatory. Their illustration has been a popular experimental artform since the 1930s. The name Helva XH-834 is a reference to the cyborg character – part human being, part spaceship, or “brainship” – in Anne McCaffrey’s 1969 novella The Ship Who Sang.

Date and country of birth

1979, GB

Career Highlights

Recent Commissions:
Care & Magic, Up Projects, Edgware Library, London (2023-24); The Hundred Club, TACO!, Thamesmead, London (2021-ongoing); Library as Memorial, Brent Biennial, London (2020-21)

Recent exhibitions: In the Open, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, WUK, Vienna; Economics the Blockbuster: It’s not Business as Usual, The Whitworth, Manchester (with Amy Feneck at The Alternative School of Economics); LIKE GODS, Swiss Cottage Library Gallery, London; Editorial Tables, Reciprocal Hospitalities, The Showroom, London; Squidgy World, Turf Projects, London (2023).

Recent publications: All the Libraries in London: Reader, with Simon Elvins, London (2023)
Drawing Risky Play, with Turf Projects, London (2023)