The un-thought about

A history for John Barbour in a handful of objects...

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Keep in mind that in this world we walk in the way of metaphors and enigmatic images, because the spirit of truth is not of this world and can be grasped by us only in so far as metaphors and symbols which we recognise as such carry us onward to that which is unknown.

(Nicholas of Cusa, 1401-1464)

Walking in the way of metaphors and enigmatic images … ‘onward to that which is unknown’: this could well describe the history of John Barbour’s practice. And having moved increasingly towards the idea of art as a process of ‘un-making’, John Barbour’s tentative speculations and evocative materialisations of ideas about this world, in turn, have become powerful reminders of human vulnerability and evidence of our inability to assert anything for sure. Indeed, looking at Barbour’s work, it would seem ‘uncertainty’ is the only thing about which we can be certain.

Works selected for the artist’s last two exhibitions, ‘Work for now’ (Australian Experimental Art Foundation [AEAF], Adelaide 2010) and ‘Infinite thanks’ (Yuill/Crowley, Sydney 2011), reveal and confirm Barbour’s ongoing determination to unravel, dismantle and continually pick away at all things to do with experience, and especially, the experiencing of art. Whether this be responding by way of things to the many forms of socio-political and ideological conditionings we endure, or constructing/ fabricating things—and the difference here between the synonyms highlights the sense of making things up or posturing for particular effect, as well as alluding to the artist’s use of fabric to make works—Barbour’s endeavours have always focused on deciphering surfaces, decoding systems, and plumbing the depths of the human psyche in order to comprehend the ways of (and possible ways through)... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

‘Work for Now’, 2010. Installation view, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, with left: untitled (think), 1990. Enamel panels, each 90 x 210cm; right: the lost routes to lovely, 2001. Oil, gesso, glue, tape, cardboard, dimensions variable.

Infinite thanks, 2005. Silk threads, cotton and cotton voile, dimensions variable. From ‘Infinite Thanks’, 2011, Yuill|Crowley, Sydney.