Frontiers
Katrina Barter
22 August–9 September

Frontiers is Katrina Barter’s latest body of work, continuing her exploration of the nature of consciousness using her grid-based method of abstraction.

In Barter’s process, the grid is used as a metaphorical tool for abstraction, representing the fragmented, malleable and imperfect nature of memory. For Frontiers, she worked from source images of 35mm photographs taken during a journey through Portugal in 2001 – a time of wonder, exploration and struggle.

In translating each square of the photograph into paint on the canvas, these personal ephemeral moments are transformed into works that create spaces for contemplation, exploration and projection for the viewer. The raw jute canvas challenges the 2D plane and invites a tactile element to being with the work as you move physically around it. The grid remains on the canvas and acts as a screen of perception and visual cues as you seek to complete the picture.

In the gallery space, Frontiers offers a self-directed journey through what Barter calls ‘moments of crossing over’.

Frontiers asks: “What do you see? What’s out there for you to cross?”

Katrina Barter is a visual artist exploring the nature of consciousness and the areas where the individual and collective meet.

She is interested in the mysterious nature of consciousness as something that is inherently subjective and continues to elude scientific and philosophical understanding, agreement and definition on what it is and how it relates, or doesn’t relate, to the physical world.

The grid is a central element of Barter’s visual language, representing both individual and collective consciousness. She employs the grid as a metaphorical construct of infinite, modular, and malleable units. The grid supports Barter’s process of abstraction, where the canvas and source image are divided into units, with each square painted to reflect a piece of the original image. This transformation renders the original image (a memory or moment) unrecognisable, opening it to new interpretations based on the viewer’s perspective.

The cloth of the canvas is also important to the experience of Barter’s work. Drawing on her earlier work with 3D woven textile installations that examined the boundaries between self and other, the raw tactility of the unprimed canvas brings a physical resonance and almost three-dimensional experience to the paintings. Graphite lines remain un-erased from the measuring and preparation process, enhancing the resonance of the abstraction process itself in the experience of the work.

Barter’s process is methodical and time consuming. It involves analysing, translating and mixing the colours within each square on the gridded up source image before painting each square on the canvas. The element of time passing and time spent is a sublayer to the work, with each square also acting as a mark of time. Her work is continuously informed by readings, listening, and contemplation of human history and shared experiences, creating dialogues between the personal and the universal.