Meanjin/Brisbane-based artist James Barth was awarded the $80,000 Copyright Agency Partnerships commission; the third in an annual series presented by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund in partnership with leading Australian arts institutions. The commission supports mid-career and established Australian artists to create and exhibit career-defining new work. Barth will exhibit her new work at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art (IMA) in late 2024.
James Barth, Spilled Blueberries, 2022. Photograph: Carl Warner. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane
Barth’s work explores themes of trans self-representation and embodiment. Trained as an oil painter, her recent work extends beyond the traditional through a layered creative process. Using 3D modelling software, Barth first renders avatars created in her likeness into detailed digital tableaux. To create her paintings, images of the artist’s compositions are silk-screen printed onto aluminium panels using oil paint. The wet paint is then brushed to soften the crisp lines of the synthetic imagery. The resulting works combine the virtual and the painterly.
Barth’s unique practice reflects her interests in painting, self-portraiture, and film. Her monochrome works often depict domestic scenes, pairing idealistic imagery rendered in clean lines and shapes with imagined bodies overwhelmed by mess and decay. Mounds of organic materials, such as fruit peels and leftover food, are often left to sweat and decompose in the uncanny worlds of Barth’s avatars, who are imbued with a sense of ennui and listlessness.
For the commission, which will extend across all of the IMA’s galleries, Barth will begin her conceptual departure from self-portraiture. While drawing on modernist architecture, cinematic languages of the 1960s and ’70s, and dance, Barth will dismantle her avatar across digital and physical worlds.
Barth’s commission follows the presentation of TextaQueen: Bollywouldn’t at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, in 2022, and James Nguyen: Open Glossary, now open at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
ima.org.au
copyright.com.au/culturalfund/copyright-agency-partnerships
