Del Kathryn Barton’s work is almost entirely filled with carefully juxtaposed figures, animal companions and floral accompaniments, and is unimaginably rich and vibrant. The colour is high in key and the paint applied with great deliberation: while the environment around the figures is dense, worked in hallucinatory clarity, the pale unblemished bodies of the protagonists are the most lightly treated in the composition, with the original drawn lines of Barton’s marker pen delineating the musculature and planes of their perfect flesh.
—Excerpt from: Julie Ewington, Del Kathryn Barton, (Sydney: Piper Press, 2013) pp. 31
Del Kathryn Barton has been exhibiting since 1995. In 2013, Barton was awarded the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Archibald Prize for the second time with a portrait of actor Hugo Weaving. This followed her 2008 Archibald Prize win with You are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with Kell and Arella. Barton’s recent body of work based on Oscar Wilde’s short story The Nightingale and the Rose was published by Art & Australia in late 2012. The Nightingale and the Rose paintings were exhibited at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne in November 2012, and at the Newcastle Art Gallery, New South Wales from December 2012 to February 2013. Her work is represented in major museum collections in Australia, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart. pressure to the need is Del Kathryn Barton’s third solo exhibition with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.
Del Kathryn Barton would like to pass on her gratitude to Tim, Ben and Bianca.
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