Del Kathryn Barton

From the series 'Engine that raised groan of rejoicing' (19), 2010
pen, ink, watercolour on paper
59.5 x 42.0 cm

SOLD

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Provenance
Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
Private collection, Sydney

The force of this image is in its exposition of the power of risk in the drawing process. It gives a wonderful sense of the blind contour, the searching for a quality of line that is candid and flat, and belonging to the artist's need of an 'honest, vulnerable, handmade surface.' (Del Kathryn Barton with Owen Craven, Artist Profile 2011)

Here we are given a significant view of the underdrawing that is fundamental to the artist's wider practice, which she has referred to as 'painted drawing' (Ibid.) and whose figures have been said to be negotiated or described by a 'thin and expressive linearity' by Amanda Rowell (Satellite Fade-out, 2011).

In this image Barton returns to her show of other-earthly delights and explains such imagery to be representative of a fascination long-held with the body and a desire to strip back all that precludes her understanding of it.

'I have a sense that the biggest secrets of the universe are discoverable within our own bodies. These big questions come back to how we inhabit our bodies with integrity and love and truth. And how do we give honesty back to the world through our bodies - that' what I'm exploring through my work'.' (Del Kathryn Barton with Owen Craven, Ibid.)

This work forms part of the series 'Engine that Raised the Groan of Rejoicing', shown in full at 'Basic Instinct', a group exhibition with Karen Woodbury Gallery in 2011.

  • From the series 'Engine that raised groan of rejoicing' (19)

Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery


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One of Australia’s most popular contemporary artists, Del Kathryn Barton is best known for her distinctive style of painting with linear, exaggerated figures and a psychedelic palette. Born in Sydney in 1972, Barton began exhibiting in 1991 and developed a reputation as a skilled draughtswoman with a particular knack for both human and animal portraiture. She has since expanded her practice to installations, textiles, printmaking and short films, across which she has explored sexuality, motherhood, and nature.

As Dr Nicola Teffer wrote on Barton ahead of Know My Name, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2020-21): “Barton’s experience of motherhood had a profound impact on her art. The fecund energy of pregnancy and intense emotions of maternity fed into personal and autobiographical imagery that for Barton was a way of understanding her own feelings about love, relationships and the connection with others.”

Barton has twice won the Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney: first, with a self-portrait reflecting on motherhood, You are what is most beautiful about me, a self-portrait with Kell and Arella (2008); and, second, with a portrait of actor Hugo Weaving, hugo (2013).

In 2012, Barton held a major solo exhibition inspired by an Oscar Wilde story, The Nightingale and the Rose, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, which was restaged and toured across Australia (2012-19). Off the back of this exhibition, she produced into an acclaimed 2015 short film which was released at major film festivals around the world. In 2017, Barton received a major survey, The highway is a disco, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, that reflected upon the themes of motherhood, womanhood and death in a collection of paintings and installations.