Heléna Dupre Thompson

Image © Heléna Dupre Thompson

Artist Statement

A "One Eighty" is a term used in skateboarding where you spin on the skateboard one hundred and eighty degrees to face the opposite direction. As a young teenager, my after-school time was spent obsessively perfecting One Eighties, Three Sixties, Handstands, and other Maneuvers, in the parking lots of nearby factories. Although I am no longer a skater, I'm still very drawn to skateboarding and the environments which it occurs. These places become a sacred space for physical expression, communal support, and in my eyes, a type of meditation.

While visiting skateparks in Oregon, I noticed how the surfaces of these environments become a canvas of mark- making. These canvases are the byproducts left behind as skateboarders skid, scrape, glide, careen and collide on concrete landscapes. They hold the history and essence of skateboarding and its culture.

In this six-year ongoing study, I'm redirecting my own passion for skateboarding. I'm examining it not from the deck of a skateboard but from the perspective beneath the wheels. ONE EIGHTY COMPULSION focuses on one-two inch surface areas, containing complex imagery, generated through the actions of skaters in their pursuit of adrenalin, satisfaction, and release. These discrete manifestations that I photograph, are artifacts of the tension, action, and passion that is infused in the paint-covered concrete when it meets with the impulses, energy, and force of the skaters.

The subjects of these photographs lack significance in the grand scale of their context but take on a new life and meaning when fully exposed. With this work, I reveal the essence of skate culture and its history, in an image that stands unbound from a practical understanding of origin.

Heléna Dupre Thompson | Portland, OR