Del Kathryn Barton, Cromwell Place, London
With Arndt Art Agency, Rachael Vance worked on the ambitious presentation of works by Australian artist Del Kathryn Barton entitled "of her own nature". Representing the artist's debut solo show in London, the exhibition was staged at Cromwell Place in South Kensington in the venue's showcase exhibition space the Pavilion Gallery.
"Through her works Barton invites audiences into an imaginative and deeply sensuous realm, where ornately decorated human and animal species are rendered in expressive line and vibrant colour. “of her own nature” comprises a new suite of major large-scale paintings alongside a curated selection of prints and the artist’s animated film “The Nightingale and the Rose” (2015)—a remarkable adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 19th century classic.
Each painting within the show exists as its own entity, containing unique figures with individual states of being. Collectively the pieces aim to interrogate notions of femininity, creation, and the divinity of the cosmos in dialogue with each other. From Barton’s perspective, the world is vivid and unbidden. Its creator is the mother, the maker, the birther. Its inhabitants are she-beasts, existing in warrior states. All that is asked of the viewer when entering the gallery space is to come with eyes wide open, brain wide open, and heart wide open. To leave preconceived notions and expectations at the door with the possibility of being rewarded by an uncompromising, universal and unbending truth.
The figures depicted in her pieces exist as expressions of Barton’s inner world. Female-presenting figures rise from bodies of water, as phoenixes from fire, surrounded by fantastical flora and fauna as they arrive in their authentic, full life force. Technicoloured serpents slide across the works, their rainbow scales capturing a sense of movement across canvas. Corporeal bodies exist in dichotomous dynamics with one another, many examining both interpersonal and internal power structures. Gigantic flowers and all-encompassing webs sit within the space cradling the women and creatures who stare, unflinching, at the viewer and challenge them to look away. The works overflow with the artist’s personal lived experience. They explode with feminine power and vibrate with intoxicating details that sanctify the works. The colours roar, reflective of the mind-altering state Barton describes when perceiving the colours of our own world, in a triumphant, visual onslaught that teeters on the line between jubilation and immense vanquishing." - Exhibition text by Sophie Nankivell
