DEL KATHRYN BARTON

Del Kathryn Barton’s world is rich with sumptuous colour; a profusion of scintillating details radiates the busy vigour of creation. Embedded in brilliant patterned fields, the women inhabiting her majestic tableaux are inextricably part of the natural world, growing into being alongside flowers and animals. It’s a moot point where vegetation stops and the women begin – are these upright figures breathing trees of life? Yet despite their physical enmeshment in this verdant growth, Barton’s figures are pictured embodiments of psychic states, of urgent emotional drives on the verge of becoming.

Perhaps being rooted in the earth explains the preternatural focus of these benign spirits, their eyes forever wide open. Notice how alert these women are, hyper-attentive to the point of anxiety: their very stillness suggests the fight-or-flight response. Of course. Here, in this silent immobility, is the potential for explosive action: each individual face captures one fugitive thought: i am not so different from you, in your inner life.... we are all uncontrollable, says one; i give my radiance to you, intones the glorious all-seeing bloom. There, on the other hand, cast bronze (whether matte black or dazzling golden) fuses opposed energies into solid forms. All are field reports from the emotional frontline.

A woman’s life is full to overflowing...many loves, competing claims, endless tasks. It’s a maelstrom of desires, demands, duties...Take the title of this exhibition: i wanted to build a bed for all the tired beds embraces the responsiveness that inflects every aspect of a mother’s life. While her children inhabit her dreams, she conjures sleep, and the loving shelter of those tiny cradles, floating in the infinite cosmos. They are for children, but also for herself. And any of us willing to join her...

• Julie Ewington, 2019