Biodata
Helen Stacey grew up on a farm near Strathalbyn, trained as an art teacher and later, after doing volunteer work overseas and in Australia, returned to art teaching, became a professional artist in 1988 and now has a gallery & studio in Strathalbyn.
She has engaged in many cross cultural projects, some related to reconciliation and Australia’s engagement with Asia. At UniSA she completed two Masters of Visual Arts degrees. Selected exhibitions and projects include –
- 1990 Living Desert, (solo) touring to four states and the National Library of China, invited by the Australian Ambassador to China
- 1996-98 coordinator for a group exhibition Journey & Discovery, Mall Galleries, London, Petronas Gallery, Kuala lumpur & Hill-Smith Fine Art Adelaide
- 1998 consultant, visual art exchange touring exhibition, Dia dua Antara Pedalaman, (between remote regions) between Malaysia and South Australia, through the National Art Gallery of Malaysia and Country Arts SA
- 1999 facilitator, 3 Malaysian artists, Sharifah Zuriah Aljefffri, Renee Kraal, J Anurenda (J Anu) presenting Experiences at Hill-Smith Fine Art
- 2002 Exploring Australian Spirituality, Adelaide Festival Fringe,
- 2004 a week’s workshop with women asylum seekers at Baxter Detention Centre, SA
- 2006 Tumbewallin Langari/Living Spirit, in collaboration with Ellen Trevorrow (Ngarrindjeri artist)
- 2007-2010 Negotiating Boundaries & Working Together, with Sheila Whittam, Royal SA Society of Arts, touring to 2 Regional Galleries with First Nations artists
- 2010 Border Crossing Art Project (group) Wendy Grace Allen, NZ, Apichart Polprasert, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, TAFE Gallery, Adelaide.
- 2013-2018 Australian Reflections on Blackbirding, in collaboration with Dr. David Bunton (husband, songwriter, historian, academic), commemorating the 150 year history of Blackbirding 1863 -1904. Scenic Rim Regional Gallery Queensland, Levuka Fiji, National Library & Archives, Vanuatu, UniSA Bob Hawke Ministerial Centre co-hosted with Pacific Islands Council of SA.
- 2019 Horizons retrospective, Royal SA Society of Arts
- 2023-25 Explore! with Kathleen Cain (wildlife) explores the impact of settlement on people, land & wildlife in consultation with First Nations Elders. Touring to Windsong Wines, Langhorne Creek, Milang Butter Factory 2024 and Murray Bridge Regional Gallery 2024-5
- Consultant for Malaysian-Australian First Nations exhibition project 2024 – 2026.
EXPLORE! Exhibition “Was… still is…” (Aboriginal land) series Across the plains: near Wellington #1 2024
‘Helen Stacey finds inspiration in the landscape . . . (that) becomes a metaphor for human experience and spiritual and creative quest.’
Adam Dutkiewicz (art critic & art historian)
Since 1987 Helen Stacey has held over thirty solo exhibitions and participated in some fifty group shows in Australia and other countries. Living Desert (with textile works created with Lorraine Marter) toured to four states, then to Beijing in 1990. In 1997, with Elsie Reade of Reade Art, she coordinated Journey & Discovery with seven other SA artists touring to London, Kuala Lumpur, concluding at Hill-Smith Fine Art, Adelaide. In 2004, with Sheila Whittam, she conducted a week’s workshop for women asylum seekers at Baxter Detention Centre. Grants from Country Arts SA enabled artist-in-residencies, mentoring and a co-consultancy for the SA-Malaysian exhibition exchange, Antara – Between Remote Regions, partnering CASA with the National Gallery of Malaysia 2000-2001. She was joint coordinator of two Alexandrina Farm Gate Festivals, 2010-12, and a co-collaborator in The Border Crossing Art Project in 2010, a New Zealand, Thailand and SA initiative that toured to Bangkok and Adelaide.
In 2007 at the RSASA, her solo, Negotiating Boundaries, explored the gate as a metaphor for colonisation and spirituality in the Alexandrina Lakes region. A series of collaborative works with Ngarrindjeri artist and Elder, Ellen Trevorrow, lead to Ngarrindjeri weaving being part of the exhibition’s tour to four regional galleries. In 2014 she and Gaynor Hartvigsen presented Liminal at the South Coast Regional Gallery.
From 2013 to 2018 she and her husband, Dr David Bunton, (songwriter and performer) took a multi-media social-justice exhibition, Australian Reflections on ‘Blackbirding’, to Queensland, Fiji and Vanuatu. Then in May 2018 an expanded exhibition and forum was co-hosted with the Pacific Islands Council of SA and the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at the UniSA, Adelaide, assisted by a Peace Foundation grant.
HORIZONS – art as a transforming journey was opened by Professor Simon Biggs, Director of the UniSA SA School of Art, at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts on Sunday March 24th 2019. Her book, HORIZONS – art as a transforming journey, was launched at the opening.