Dr Helena Bezzina
Artist, Art Therapist, Educator and Researcher
I am an artist, art therapist, educator and researcher. Based on Awabakal and Worimi country, I draw on my art practice as research in the field of Health and Wellbeing. I received a Bachelor of Arts from COFA University of NSW and work with mixed media with a focus on drawing and ink work.
Working in interpretive programming within museums and galleries for over fifteen years provided me with firsthand experiences of the positive transformative effects of viewing, making, and discussing art. This experience, along with working with seniors living with Alzheimer's and youth with mental health issues, has motivated me to focus my current art-led research as an inquiry into the role of museums and galleries as potential sites for mental health and wellbeing. The result has been the establishment of the HEAD2ART research project.
My supporting arts-based research practice is intuitive and inquiry-based, and I draw on art as an alternate way of knowing, exploring concepts and ideas through mark-making.
HEAD2ART is a museum-based wellbeing program developed for high school students, run in partnership with the Museum of Art and Culture yapang, headspace Newcastle and the University of Newcastle. It draws on tools from both art therapy and museum inquiry-based learning, and brings high school students into the gallery to make art, look closely and connect with others, as early support that works alongside headspace services.
Read more on the HEAD2ART page using the first button below, or open the protocol with the second button, which sets out how to run HEAD2ART in your school, museum or headspace centre.
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New and Archival Works From the Studio
The recent phenomena of Zoom inspired my work during the ongoing COVID pandemic. I have easily spent over 5 hours a day with work, social and community meetings on zoom. This is an experience I have chosen to explore in this current project, Zoom Gardens. Drawing on a phenomenological approach, I focus, through drawing, on the connections we established as we function within this living garden, tending to each other, together side-by-side, but essentially alone. Drawing is cathartic; it allows me to focus and look again, connecting me to the luminous figures within zoom, a liminal in-between space, this zoom garden.
Zoom Gardens
Unquiet
This searching for meaning through drawing practices sits well within art therapist Skaife’s (2001) theorising on the intersubjective focus and the centrality of the body in making meaning. Skaife considers art-based processes to be the making visible of what is hidden. Skaife believes that drawing can bring attention to the way we come to see or make meaning.
Four images: Unquiet, mixed media 1 to 4 2023
Helena Bezzina
In the spirit of reconciliation, Helena Bezzina acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today and everyday.
© 2035 by Helena Bezzina. Created by Adlib Creative
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I.D. Series of self-portraits.
These works focus on the process of mark making to both interrogate self and society.
I draw on the therapeutic benefits of drawing, adhering to André Breton’s practice of ‘auto drawing’ to access the unconscious (1933). I am not interested in mimesis or looking for a surface resemblance, but rather grasps at the inner state of my psyche or to draw what cannot be put into words.
Joy: Art as therapy
I engaged in selfcare via a series of still life drawings and paintings, enjoying joy through pure mark making and colour. Art therapist Waller (2015) argues that art making allows people to express feeling and ideas in an alternative metaphorical and symbolic language which supports healing.