Photo: Thomas McCammon

I work primarily with film, performance and music composition, and am drawn to time-based mediums for their capacity to induce heightened states of being. The vivid, unsettling personas and situations in my artworks prioritise sensing above making sense, and they draw from personal experiences of loss, near death and a politics of trans liberation. I tune into histories of knowledge-making and connection that do not easily map onto the ‘seen’ or the rational, to imagine ways of being that expand beyond representation. Visions are more important than visibility.


My artwork has been presented in solo exhibitions at Western Front (Vancouver, 2025), the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), The Heide Museum of Modern Art (2021) and Blindside Gallery (2019), and in a range of group settings including at The Samstag Museum of Art (2022), The Monash University Museum of Art (2021 - 2022), The National Gallery of Victoria (2021, 2019), The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2022, 2020, 2018, 2017), The Museum of Contemporary Art (2019) and Contemporary Art Tasmania (2019) amongst other spaces.I’ve given performance lectures and artist talks at The National Gallery of Victoria (2022, 2019), Parsons and The New School (2020, 2018), Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2020), Monash University Museum of Art (2019) and The Centre for Contemporary Photography (2018). My work is held in the Monash University Museum of Art and private collections internationally.

I currently live on Wurundjeri country in a trailer built with the help of my friends. I work as an academic in visual arts at the Victorian College of the Arts and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. 


CV

Contact: helloarchiebarry [at] gmail.com