海伦‧乍得维克1953年生于伦敦南部的克罗伊登，1973-6年就读布莱顿理工学院，1976-7年入读伦敦切尔西艺术学院。她以原创而极度个人化的方式演绎当代艺术，以自己的身体作为创作主题和描绘对象。与她同期的艺术家，很少能像她如此独特地运用现代科技，如复印机、投影机、大型宝丽莱照相机、计算机和显微镜来创作。离开艺术学院后，她开始参照自己身体的各部位，制成软性而有机的雕塑，更将雕塑作品转化为现场表演，直接而真切地演绎出来。早期的自传式作品，表现她由出生至成人的发展过程。后期较复杂的装置作品，则把她身体的影印本与大量有机形体结合，强调身体感官的享受和短暂性的欢愉。
乍得维克的作品时常对物理上或是文化上的「界限」提出质疑。她通过计算机，把细胞结构图与天然海岸线重迭，制作了一系列「病毒景观」摄影作品。她后期又用宝丽莱相机制成系列作品《肉的抽象》（1989），表现对内脏器官的形态、功能的迷恋和审视态度。乍得维克因先天性心脏病而英年早逝，《致欢愉的花圈》系列是她临终前的作品之一。整个系列有十三幅圆形彩色照片，描绘一束束花朵放置于家用化学液之中，作品将各样有机与有毒，或流动与静态，或清洁与肮脏的物质混杂融合，并糅合了艺术与科技元素。圆形碟子使人联想到实验室中的培养皿，寓意文化可以被培养。
乍得维克于1987年获「特纳奖」提名，1994年在伦敦蛇形画廊举行个展，大获好评，展出作品包括沸腾的巧克力喷泉《可可》，以及与伙伴在雪地上撒尿，形成孔洞后倒模铸成的雕塑《小便之花》；同年参加圣保罗双年展。乍得维克于1996年逝世。
Helen Chadwick was born in Croydon, south London in 1953, and studied at Brighton Polytechnic from 1973-6 and Chelsea School of Art in London from 1976-7. Her contribution to contemporary art was original and intensely personal, characterised by the use of her own body as both subject and object. Few artists at the time embraced the means of modern technology— the photocopier, light projection, large format Polaroid camera, computer and microscope— in such a distinctive way. After leaving art school she began to make soft, organic objects based on parts of her body. Direct and intimate, she translated these sculptures into live performances. Early autobiographical works depicted her development from birth to maturity. Later, more complex installations comprised photocopied images of her body suspended in a sea of organic forms, emphasising the sensuality and transience of physical pleasure.
A constant theme in much of Chadwick's work was the questioning of boundaries, both physical and cultural. A series of “viral landscape” photoworks involved a computer generation of Chadwick’s cellular structure overlaid onto images of the natural coastline. A later series using the Polaroid camera entitled Meat Abstracts (1989), presented the viscera of the body in an extraordinary examination of the function, form and fetish of internal organs. One of the last bodies of work Chadwick undertook, before her premature death from a congenital heart defect, was Wreath to Pleasure. The series consisted of thirteen circular cibachrome prints that combined elements of art and technology, mixing and merging the organic and toxic, fluid and static, clean and dirty, with clusters of flowers settling on the surface of various domestic fluids. The circular dish reminiscent of Petri suggested that a culture could be grown as well as acquired.
She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1987 and had a widely acclaimed solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1994 which included a fountain of hot bubbling chocolate, Cacao, and Piss Flowers, sculptures made by casting the holes left by Chadwick and her partner urinating in the snow. The same year her work was shown at the Bienal de São Paulo. Helen Chadwick died in 1996.