Helen Chadwick (1953 - 1996)
Piss Flowers, 1991-92
Bronze and cellulose lacquer
Twelve parts, each approx. 70 × 65 × 65 cm
Tate Modern
I wanted to start this article by asking you, the reader, to guess what the photo above is depicting. Except, silly me, I’ve already given away the answer in the title. Yes, you read it correctly: ‘Piss Flowers’ is not just a provocative name, it’s a factually accurate description of what you are viewing.
In 1996 Chadwick and her husband took turns urinating into flower-shaped moulds they had filled with snow. Plaster was then poured into the crevices, from which bronze casts were made. More specifically, “The flower petals were made by the urine of Chadwick’s male partner, whereas the flower stems and pistils were made by Chadwick’s.”
At Frieze London 2026 the Richard Saltoun Gallery prominently displayed eight of them (from a set of twelve) in their booth. While passing by I challenged my partner to figure out what they were. “Famous city skylines or buildings” was their final answer. It was a pretty good guess. I also would have accepted “giant ant or termite towers”. You could ask 100 people what they were and I’m pretty confident not a single individual would correctly guess the answer unless they had been tipped off. That’s one of the reasons why I like these works. Another reason is seeing the reaction once people learn how they were made. When disgust and curiosity crash together you get some very amusing facial expressions.
Abstract art is often misunderstood and quickly dismissed, even when people appreciate the cognitive and physical requirements to produce it. “Surely she’s taking the piss!” one might say of Chadwick’s flowers. A more divisive viewer might claim the work is shite. Thankfully Chadwick didn’t cast that in the snow. She has, however, been known to include raw meat, rotting vegetables, pig intestines, human hair, dead fish, bubble bath and bubbling chocolate in her artworks. Generally not all together, though once, yes. Her 1986 work ‘Carcass’ is quite literally a compost heap, fermenting away inside a vertical plexiglass box.
As you might expect from that list of materials a lot of Chadwick’s artworks are visually unsubtle, often challenging and occasionally just plain gross. The Jupiter Artland website states her work is characterised by “aesthetic beauty created out of an alliance of unconventional, often vile materials” but I think the abstraction of Piss Flowers is one of the reasons it is so revered. Unlike, say, Andy Warhol’s piss paintings composed of urine soaked into canvas, the ‘vile material’ in the title of Chadwick’s work was integral to it’s creation but is critically, and literally, absent from the final form.
Since both Chadwick and her husband contributed the raw material needed to create the negative space from which the flowers were cast it has often been written that this work is both a testament of love and a nod to the frank and sometimes yucky intimacy that happens when two people live together. Maybe you’ll think about these flowers the next time you’re brushing your teeth while your partner has a wee. Personally I think the series would have been more powerful and subversive had they only been formed by Chadwick. Men stereotypically have no qualms about whipping out their d*cks and pissing in public. It happens multiple times every night in Soho. Whereas a woman urinating in public is often a more vulnerable process and generally considered taboo.
Piss Flowers is the kind of artwork that doesn’t just make me curious about the artwork, it makes me want to know more about its creator and eager to see what they’ll do next. Alas, Chadwick died unexpectedly young in 1996 at the age of 42. Though she taught the YBAs, exhibited consistently throughout her career and was the first woman to be nominated for the Turner Prize she isn’t shown very much these days. When she is, however, it’s always an impactful and memorable experience.
Tate Modern displayed their full set of Piss Flowers in a Spring 2025 show. The exhibition included a series of archival photos documenting the creation process and they were just as amusing and exactly as you are probably envisioning them in your head right now. Alas, the images were black & white so I guess we’ll never know if these snow white works were originally yellow.
That’s why I like it.
It’s contemporary art that’s both pleasing and pisses people off.
Previously, on Why I Like It:
Oct — Corbel Ammonoidea (2024), Catriona Robertson
Sep — SHARKS! (2020), Jaimie Shorten
Aug — The Choir of the Innocents (2010-present), Andrei Pandea
Want more? Here’s a list of the first three dozen articles in this series.