James Barth: The Clumped Spirit

James Barth trained as an oil painter, and her works play on traditional genres of portraiture and still life but exceed them. Using 3D modelling software, she creates stages, props, and avatars, which are then transmuted into screen-printed oil paintings and animated videos. In her paintings, screen-printed images are brushed to soften them, combining the virtual and the painterly.

Much of Barth’s work explores the themes of self-representation and embodiment. It contends with her experience as a trans-woman, navigating the constant pressures of visibility and vulnerability. Her works often depict domestic scenes, sometimes showing idealised imagery, sometimes showing bodies overwhelmed by decay. Mounds of organic material, such as fruit peel and leftover food, are left to sweat and decompose in her uncanny world, which is imbued with a sense of ennui and listlessness. In addition to new paintings and videos, ‘The Clumped Spirit’ makes a dramatic move into sculpture. Barth’s 3D-printed sculptures, coated in zinc, recall petrified figures from Pompeii.

‘The Clumped Spirit’ is the third in a series of annual $80,000 commissions funded by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund to support mid-career and established artists in developing and presenting significant new bodies of work. The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art.

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'The Clumped Spirit' is presented in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art as part of Copyright Agency Partnerships, an annual commissioning series supporting mid-career and established visual artists to develop and present a significant new body of work. It is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, IMA Commissioners Circle and UNSW New Contemporaries.

Image: Installation view, James Barth: The Clumped Spirit. Institute of Modern Art. Photograph: Joe Ruckli. Image courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane