“Stranger than fiction Performance”
Archie Barry
3 Aug → 3 Aug 2024

Orange, green, blue, pink and black pencil line marks scribbled on a cream wall. Drawings are compressed in sections on either side of wall, then scatter into fine line scribbles to the top of the wall.
Archie Barry, 'Stranger than fiction', 2024, West Space, Collingwood Yards. Photography by Machiko Abe.

Archie Barry brought language to the gallery through lyrical hand movements and singing, activating their work in Stranger than fiction.

Archie's performance unfolded across a pale yellow wall, in harmony with two humming voices emanating at the height of the artists' mouth, embedded within the gallery walls themselves. With their hands adorned in fingernails fabricated from multicoloured pencils, Archie sang as they made marks, letters, words and shapes that push and pull the written word apart.

The work references an important, eccentric and troubling figure in the history of trans organising, Reed Erickson (1917-1992), and forms part of the artist's ongoing research around a trans ontology of disembodiment, perceptions and sensations of being out-of-body.

Kenneth Suico captured the performance in video, offering a glimpse into the reverberating, emotive, aural experience shared with audiences in the gallery:

https://youtu.be/jqw3nS00jf0
A large white wall is in view with two sweeping, colourful wall drawings. The drawings are light marks of colour such as orange, green, blue and black.
A woman in a shiny green coat holding a glass of red wine leans with her ear to a cream coloured wall. She is listening to the sounds that are coming from within the wall.
Orange, blue, green and pink pencil line drawings sweeping across a cream wall.
2 figures lean and listen to an off-white coloured wall with a sound installation projecting from within the wall
Orange, blue, green and pink pencil line drawings write the word 'somewhere' on a cream wall.

Archie Barry's artwork is autobiographical, somatic and process-led. Through performance, video, singing, sculpture and music composition their practice reaches towards often imperceptible forces including spirits, affects, thoughts and the vibrant echoes of trauma. Their artworks trouble dominant notions of selfhood as singular, stable, legible and sequential.

Related

A video still from a film by Rä di Martino. It shows a back lit figure with voluminous blonde hair and a blue neck. The have a selection of long sticks that are coming from the chest. Their neck is painted blue

“Stranger than fiction”
Archie Barry, Teresa Busuttil, Nicholas Currie, Andrea Illés, Rosie Isaac, Basim Magdy, Rä di Martino, Sammaneh Pourshafighi and Joanna Kitto
29 June → 31 Aug 2024

A woman stands behind a door against a wall during a performance. Someone is holding a bright pink light that is shining on her and lighting the room.

“Stranger than fiction Performance”
Andrea Illés
9 Aug → 31 Aug 2024

“Stranger than fiction Symposium”
Archie Barry, Teresa Busuttil, Brian Fuata, Helen Grogan, Andrea Illés, Rosie Isaac, Joanna Kitto, Basim Magdy and Joshua Pether
24 Aug → 24 Aug 2024