Almeida’s work is meticulously produced, and in it she questions the action of painting, the body as performer and the space between the spectator, the canvas and the artist gesture. She makes series of works titled, Inhabited Canvas, Inhabited Drawing and Seduce. The works here are nearly all B&W photographs with elements such as acrylic paint, horsehair thread and pen. The Inhabited Canvas series of 1975 – 1976, are fascinating works in that they disrupt your sense of where you are sited as viewer. The use of mirror and reflection and Almeida’s hand with brush, altering through versions, de-stabilises our position in relation to the image, her body as represented by the image and the physical stuff of the paint.

The evolution of the paint itself as the image sequences, in the work, Study for inner Improvement (1976) sees the blue paint applied as if in the air itself, where it becomes form, a form that is consumed through the mouth by the artist portrait. Here the artist as corporeal and photograph is challenged by the real substance of paint. Another Study for Inner improvement (1977), sees the paint become stuff and form that can be picked up and moved from the ether to being placed in the artist’s pocket.

Inhabited drawings, (1977), B&W Photograph, Horsehair (6 elements), is a narration of the making process. Image 1, a line is drawn on a photograph of paper, the shadow hand and pen is visible, a black line-pen is evident. The shadow hand begins in Image 2 to adjust the line. In 3 – the line is puckered. In 4 the line is made three dimensional and physical as a protruding element. 5. The pen break through the film that is the paper and we see the nib as breaking the surface between the images world and our physical space and reality. The thread-line protrudes even more. 6. The pen, the line and the artists finger moves further into the space between one world and another. The veil between worlds is absolutely transgressed.

Illusion made physical is an inherent part of Helena Almeida’s work as is performance. The performative act as a way to test ideas to do with the act of being an artist, a woman and politically minded are demonstrate in this exhibition. The act of artist as painter is more fully explored in the earlier 1970’s works and the later more recent pieces delve more substantially into the artist’s body as tool. In a series of large photographs titled, Inside Me (18 elements) 1998, we see the artist dressed in black in a number of incumbent positions on the floor. It’s as if at moments she is documenting her own death. ‘This is what I could look like dead’, is almost what she shouts at us to acknowledge. Maybe this work represents some form of death or collapse. Some of the images seem more hopeless than others and are better images for it. When her legs are upright or falling down, there is the suggestion of some life, but maybe we are seeing a lingering evolution, paused, re-winded, forwarded, paused. This sequence of images, test the best version, the ideal image of collapse. The fact that we are looking at a performance for camera, is strategically suggested by the curatorial decision to place opposite the work Seduce, B &W Photographs, 2 elements (2002). This work shows the artist standing, her back to us, and leaning to the left in one and the right in the other. This suggests the limbering up process for getting the body warm before the photo –shoot, work begins. Im still unsure as to whether this is a good decision. It reinforces the liveness and action of the performer, and perhaps as such could be seen to undermine the poignancy of the artist auto-documentation of her inevitable demise, and her ability to control that image. Almeida’s, desire to do this is evident in her enthusiasm for her face to be seen in the earlier works, a fact that is no longer made visible to us in the more recent works, now she is older. Now her focus is on the clothed and articulated body, hair covers the facial expression.

There are many works, worth mentioning in this show, but the one other that stands out is Study for the work Seduce, Video Projection, B&W. This is a sequence of video chapters, of the artist trying to balance on one leg wearing a high heel shoe. The continuing performance, shows us the many attempts to balance successfully on one leg, but the failure is evident. She uses a stool, she swops feet, in order to give each a rest, and as time goes on it is clear that the high heel hurts her and she makes sounds to that effect against the backdrop of classical music. The work explodes the convention of the necessity for women to be a certain type of femininity in society and the difficulty in reality of achieving these ideals.