Barbara Campbell

BARBARA CAMPBELL is a visual artist working primarily in performance. Since 1982 she has worked with the specific physical and contextual properties of a given site, be it art gallery, museum, atrium, tower, radio airwaves or the world wide web, in developing and presenting her works.

After completing undergraduate degrees in fine arts and art history, Barbara Campbell was awarded a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney in 1998.

She has undertaken residencies at Griffith University, Queensland, The University of Melbourne, The University of Sydney, the Australia Council studios in Santa Monica and New York and the Power Institute of Fine Arts studio in Paris. In 1994 the NSW Ministry for the Arts awarded her the Women and Arts Fellowship and in 2004 she received one of four Fellowship grants awarded by the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council to develop and present her online durational performance,[[After completing undergraduate degrees in fine arts and art history, Barbara Campbell was awarded a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney in 1998.

She has undertaken residencies at Griffith University, Queensland, The University of Melbourne, The University of Sydney, the Australia Council studios in Santa Monica and New York and the Power Institute of Fine Arts studio in Paris. In 1994 the NSW Ministry for the Arts awarded her the Women and Arts Fellowship and in 2004 she received one of four Fellowship grants awarded by the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council to develop and present her online durational performance,[[After completing undergraduate degrees in fine arts and art history, Barbara Campbell was awarded a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney in 1998.

She has undertaken residencies at Griffith University, Queensland, The University of Melbourne, The University of Sydney, the Australia Council studios in Santa Monica and New York and the Power Institute of Fine Arts studio in Paris. In 1994 the NSW Ministry for the Arts awarded her the Women and Arts Fellowship and in 2004 she received one of four Fellowship grants awarded by the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council to develop and present her online durational performance, 1001 nights cast.

Between 1996 and 2001 Campbell developed and presented work at various sites around The University of Sydney. These came together in the survey exhibition Flesh Winnow, in 2002. The accompanying collection of essays of the same name was published jointly by the Department of Performance Studies and the Power Institute: Foundation for Art and Visual Culture of The University of Sydney, edited by Laura Gintersand Barbara Campbell.

Although performance art is by its nature ephemeral, artefacts and objects created in and around Campbell’s performances are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia; Griffith University; Queensland University; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the State Library of Queensland and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She was also commissioned to create [[i|Cameral]], a public art work for the ACT Legislative Assembly, Canberra in 2001.

Her most recent teaching work has been in Experimental Drawing for the Foundation program at Sydney College of the Arts. She has also held intensive workshops in the intersections of writing, drawing and performance in the UK, USA and Australia.

Selected Works

2005 – 08 1001 nights cast, durational online performance.

2004 "The Grimwade Effect", performance, Craft ACT, Canberra Footage, frottage performance and print edition, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra

2003 "The Grimwade Effect" (premiere), performance, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne Plaint, ephemeral war memorial for Iraq, Woolley Building, The University of Sydney

2002 Flesh Winnow", performance survey, presented by The University of Sydney

2001 "Cameral", public art commission, ACT Legislative Assembly, Canberra;
"The Machine", oiled again, performance, The University of Sydney;
"Sécateur", performance commission, Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, for Likeness: Biography and Portraiture symposium

2000 "Remanence", performance, The University of Sydney
"Inflorescent", performance, Performance Season, Canberra Contemporary Art Space.

1999 "Inflorescent", (premiere) performance, The Macleay Museum, The University of Sydney
"Cloche", performance, Centre for Performance Studies, The University of Sydney

1998 "The Seduction of Art", performance, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Fresh Glories, exhibition, CAST, Hobart

1997 "Fresh Glories", (premiere) performances and exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra for Archives and the Everyday, site-specific projects
"The Midday Movie and the History of Australian Painting", workshop performance, Centre for Performance Studies, The University of Sydney
"The Secret, multiple, International Multiples", Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
"Lozenge", audio performance and installation, Central Theatres Foyer, Griffith University, Brisbane

1996 "Galatea", performance and video, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne and Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart for How Say You exhibition
"Zero Hour", audio performance with guest artists Amanda Stewart and Stevie Wishart, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Radio adaptation broadcast on 'The Listening Room' ABC Classic FM and ‘The Eleventh Hour’, KPFA-FM, Berkeley, California for Soundculture 96

1995 "I have been given the name Tania", event for Polaroid camera, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
"Backwash", performance, The Lab, San Francisco
"Cries from the Tower", performance, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra as part of the first National Sculpture Forum

1994 "Fleas or The Menses of Lizzie Borden", performances, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney as part of 25 Years of Performance Art in Australia. Components in national touring exhibition

1993 "Backwash", (premiere) performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales for Australian Perspecta 1993
"The Diamond Necklace Affair", performance, The New Gallery, 18th St Arts Complex, Santa Monica, California

1992 "Cries from the Tower", (premiere) performance, ABC Ultimo Centre, Sydney for the Third International Symposium on Electronic Arts (TISEA)

1989 "Carmen (privately)", performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Public Collections National Gallery of Australia; Griffith Artworks, Griffith University; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; James Hardie Collection, State Library of Queensland; University Art Museum, University of Qld.

Selected Publications

“The Movement of Ghosts, Provocation" TDR, Vol 53, No. 1, 2009 (forthcoming)

“Travels Through 1001 nights cast” in The Live Art Almanac, Daniel Brine and Emmy Minton(eds), London: the Live Art Development Agency, 2008.

Articles on Barbara's work

Cynthia Troup, “Weightlessly home, safe”, OnScreen in RealTime #86, Aug/Sept 2008

Jane Goodall, “The virus and the oracle: words as signs”, Artlink, vol 27, no 1, March 2007.

Cynthia Troup, “The art of performance: online and alive”, OnScreen in RealTime #73, June/July 2006

Valerie Howes, “A very long vigil”, Maisonneuve, 16.12.2006

Legislative Assembly for the ACT, The Art of the Legislative Assembly, Canberra: Legislative Assembly for the ACT, 2006 CraftACT, content(s), Canberra: CraftACT, 2005

Nicki Harvey, “Barbara Campbell: The Grimwade Effect”, Craft Culture, Dec 2003

Simon Castles, “Grim ways”, Bulletin, Vol. 121, No. 45, 11 Nov, 2003, p. 11

Ann Stephen, review of Flesh Winnow, Art Monthly Australia, No. 158, April 2003

Jacqueline Millner, "Barbara Campbell: a body of/at work", RealTime No. 52, Dec 2002/Jan 2003

“Catriona Moore interviews Barbara Campbell”, RealTime No. 51, Oct/Nov 2002
Laura Ginters and Barbara Campbell (eds), Flesh Winnow: six performances, Sydney: Power Publications, 2002

Virginia Baxter, review of “The Machine, oiled again”, RealTime Online, No. 45, Oct/Nov 2001

Lisa Byrne “Barbara Campbell: Two Recent Performances”, Globe E-journal, Issue 11, December 2000

Mary Roberts, “Being Drawn: Barbara Campbell’s Inflorescent”, Eyeline, No. 42, Autumn/Winter, 2000

Gordon Bull, review of “Archives and the Everyday”, Like, No. 6, 1998

Joan Kerr, “Not Just Simple Nostalgia”, Art Monthly Australia, No. 105, 1997

Heather Inglis, review of “Lozenge”, Eyeline, No. 34, Spring 1997

Jacqueline Millner, “Galatea: A Likely Story”, catalogue essay for How Say You?, Melbourne: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 1996

Annemarie Jonson, “Performance Anxiety”, Art and Text, No. 49, September 1994

Colin Hood, “Upon Leaving the Picture out of the Theatre”, RealTime, No. 2, August 1994

Amanda King, “Speaking the Ineffable: New Directions in Performance Art”, Artlink, Vol. 14, No. 1, Autumn 1994

Annemarie Jonson, Review of “Backwash”, RealTime, No. 1, February, 1994

Sarah Miller, Catalogue Essay for Australian Perspecta 1993, Sydney: Art Gallery of NSW, 1993

Anne Marsh, Body and Self: Performance Art in Australia 1969-92, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993

Shaun Davies and Annemarie Jonson, “Nonetheless, TISEA”, Photofile, No. 38, 1993

Simon Crosbie, “Degrees of Compliance”, Agenda, No. 30/31, 1993

Steven Ball, “Checking in at Hotel Experimenta”, Agenda, No. 30/31, 1993

Beth Jackson, “Women and Technology”, Eyeline, No. 16, Spring 1991

Michelle Helmrich, Review of “The Diamond Necklace Affair”, Broadsheet, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1991

Sarah Miller, Review of “Loom of Arachne”, Eyeline, No. 15, 1991