Helen Petts is an artist and film-maker who explores rhythm, texture, sound and chance events, both in the landscape and in her long-standing relationship with the free improvisation music community. A former television director of arts programmes, she now regularly shows her own art work at film and music festivals and in gallery installations – both in the UK and internationally. Her latest commission for Manchester Art Gallery "Space & Freedom" explored the legacy of Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia in the Cumbrian landscape and featured Steve Beresford improvising on prepared piano. In 2012 she was commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad and the Hatton Gallery Newcastle to make the film "Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing", in which she followed Kurt Schwitters' escape route from Nazi Germany to rural Norway and the Lake District. She studied Fine Art at Goldsmith's College and Middlesex University and Film at Westminster University. Her work is distributed by Lux Artists Moving Image.
This film, which is a collaboration with musicians Roger Turner and Phil Minton, is called "Unfathomable Liquids". It was originally commissioned by Anne Bean and Robin Klassnik of Matt's Gallery for TAPS - Improvisations with Paul Burwell, a large collaborative exhibition at Dilston Grove in September 2010.