Deutscher and Hackett

Calmly striking an expansive and dramatic pose, the gleaming golden figure Here she HEAR, 2019 gives a physical form to the aloof sirens of Del Kathryn Barton’s mystical world. The artist’s largest sculpture at the time of its creation, this towering freestanding being is endowed with gracefully elongated limbs, large, outstretched palms and multiple ears sprouting from her thighs and neck. Barton’s surreal figure has evolved from the chimeric female avatars that have populated her painted canvases for the last twenty years, here bearing multiple physical attributes of a benevolent and attentive guardian.
 
A two-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portrait painting, Del Kathryn Barton’s artistic practice is remarkably diverse, expanding beyond the planar support to now include cinematography, large-scale installations and sculpture created in collaboration with master craftspeople.1 Barton’s multidisciplinary practice revolves around figuration and is anchored by a process of theme-and-variation that creates strong aesthetic links between each of her works. Having been drawn to the medium of cast bronze for its rich artistic history, Barton’s stylised sculptural works combine ancient techniques with striking contemporary finishes. The surface of Here she HEAR is uniformly monochrome and reflective, dazzling the eye and directing attention instead to the sculpture’s silhouette, distorted with Surrealist hybridity. Barton has employed the ancient Greek contrapposto technique to create a naturalistic, dynamic stance and to further emphasise the figure’s elongated limbs and impressive scale. Her swan-like form, with arms held gracefully aloft and her body tapering to a sinuous column culminating in pointed high-heeled shoes, echoes the powerfully glamorous pose of fashion supermodel Dorothy Juba in Richard Avedon’s 1955 photograph Dovima with Elephants, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris.
 
Smooth and mirror-polished, Here she HEAR is sharply defined, coated in a lustrous shell that reflects her surroundings. This radiance is a defining feature of Barton’s works, with Julie Ewington noting ‘…in her world everything is always light, bright and backlit with an immanent glow.’2 The slippery shininess of the sculpture’s surface, while seductive, also repels the viewer, endowing the figure with the same majestic and untouchable presence of Barton’s painted goddesses and densely patterned surfaces.
 
The titles of Barton’s works are often derived from poetic stream-of-consciousness jottings from the studio, a type of Dada automatic writing.3 The wordplay of homophones within the title of this work, Here she HEAR, underscores the figure’s imposing presence and large ears. Silently listening and receiving with open hands, Barton’s guiding goddess joins the mother figures of the artist’s universe in confidently navigating the ‘maelstrom of desires, demands and duties.’4
 
Produced in an edition of three, Here she HEAR was first presented in New York, the only sculpture within a solo exhibition of new paintings at Albertz Benda. When it was shown in Sydney at Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, it was accompanied by three other large bronze busts bearing similar attributes, one of which was later described by the artist: ‘This shiny one looks up and outwards; she knows how to stretch, command and move her being.’5
 
1. This sculpture was fabricated by Crawford’s Foundry in Sydney.
2. Ewington, J., Del Kathryn Barton, Piper Press, Sydney, 2014, p. 47
3. Wallis, P., ‘Matrix Of Desire’, Del Kathryn Barton: Highway is a Disco, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2017, p. 10
4. Ewington, J., ‘Foreword’, I wanted to build a bed for all the tired beds, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 2019
5. Artist statement, Wynne Prize 2020, Art Gallery of New South Wales 
 
LUCIE REEVES-SMITH