Helen Denerley

Sculptor

Helen Denerley lives and works on a remote hillside in North East Scotland. Since graduating from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen in 1977 she has worked continuously as a sculptor. Best known in Scotland for her larger than life scrap metal giraffes on Leith Walk in Edinburgh, her work has been commissioned in Japan and South Georgia and is in collections across the UK. In 2016 Helen completed a 6m giraffe for a private client in Hong Kong.

 

Helen’s work is the result of meticulous observation and drawing skills combined with a love of the natural world and all the technical aspects of working in metal. The forms are never whole, the use of negative space makes them come alive, creating form where there is only air. Helen has turned this into ‘Positive Space’.

Current and Recent Commissions

helen and tree sculpture

Tree of Life

4.5 m Tree of life commissioned by Trees for Life for a new rewilding centre at Dundreggan. Completed December 2022.  
Haddo Sphere

Lord Aberdeen Memorial

Commission to make a memorial for the late Lord Aberdeen to be placed in Haddo estate. Completed April 2022.
peacock sculpture

Peacock for Delilah’s Restaurant. Lochinver.

Made entirely from kitchen scrap. Opening of restaurant Summer 2022

Aberdeen Angus Bull

Private commission to make a life size Aberdeen Angus bull.
starling sculptures on railings

Starlings, Loanhead 2021

Commission from Hart Builders to make thirty starlings for railings in a new housing complex in Loanhead.

Solo Exhibition

Salvage | 5 – 31 August 2023

Kilmorack Gallery

Salvage Exhibition Brochure

‘Salvage has come together with the sort of great leaps only an artist with a lifetime sculpting experience can conjure. It is in many ways Helen Denerley’s Everest, a peak, in her output and at a time when most see the fragility in the natural world around us. Many also feel an affinity with the creatures she sculpts and we share the Earth with: the butterflies and pollinators that Denerley forms from discarded bicycle parts, springs and the now jewel-like screwdriver blades, the gentle grazing goats made from plough shares, a graceful flying red kite magicked from discarded scythe blades and small birds from old spoons. Here is a resurrection rising from things we throw away too quickly.’

Tony Davidson

Gallery Director, Kilmorack Gallery

Exhibitions

Helen and Ape Sculpture looking at each other.

Salvage

A solo exhibition at Kilmorack gallery 5th to 31st August 2023.

One of the “Best Things to do in Scotland in August”

according to the Herald Newspaper.

A wader sculpture on white box

Flight Paths

A group exhibition of birds at the Scottish Ornothological Club Gallery, Aberlady. September 2023

July 2024  Exhibition at Summerhall galleries Edinburgh as part of the Fringe festival.

Living Magazine Cover
Ape sculpture on cover of magazine

Hen Harriers Video

email: helen@helendenerley.co.uk

Work available at:

Kilmorack Gallery, Beauly
Rhue Gallery, Ullapool,
Tolquhon Gallery, Tarves
Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow
Moncrieff-Bray Gallery Petworth
Heinzel Gallery, Aberdeen