Glenn Barkley - itsallright

Glenn Barkley itsallright

G l e n n B a rk ley i t sa llrig h t 26th October - 26th November, 2016

© Utopia Art Sydney

itsallright

Most of my work is a response to the things around me, to popular song, the garden, conversations I have with people about art and the internet. I have made these works in Sydney and Berry.

When I am in the studio making things and really doing it I am thinking about things constantly.

Some parts of making my work are incredibly boring and monotonous but I still love it.

Putting all those holes or sticking slip into the spaces left by the tools when I made them has its own kind of repetitious Zen state. I used to say ‘be the slump’ but as I’ve kept making things now my ambition and abilities are starting to coalesce. Which is a bit of a shame really. I might start to take up throwing seriously.

Some of these pots also talk about older guys and the weird way they use the internet to tell everyone how unhappy they are. It’s my wish that after they have had a go at someone the cancerous hate inside of them is coughed up like a fake witch doctor removing chicken giblet sized tumours from desperate sufferers. Some older ladies have been having a go too, so it’s good to spread the hate around evenly.

The oncoming never ending digital death spiral will probably mean my pots will be one of the few ways of tracking what was happening in the digital realm during 2016. The irony of that I find quite compelling and amusing.

My pots are my way of talking about the vitriol whilst making a bit of pocket money – you have to find subject matter somewhere. It’s difficult to make something interesting out of random Facebook posts and Instagram comments but I’ve tried.

I am still completely embedded in the art world and I think these pots are like messages that can be read in the future – Ars longa vita brevis. I worry about all the people doing kooky dancing, amateur-hour music and post-internet art. Where will their work end up?

To paraphrase Robert MacPherson it’s a fine line between the gallery and the rubbish dump.

But I am part of this stupidity also. My only saving grace is that once fired pots are pretty fixed and it’s hard to get rid of them. You can destroy the form but it would take a real effort to grind the bits back to powder.

Even if the pots were shards they would be interesting. I read a lot about the past and look at the pots of the people who came before us – the old ones – now mainly in fragments. I think about the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe – he is the ghost that haunts these works.

When he jumped off a cliff in the Blue Mountains in an act of revolutionary suicide what went through his great mind? All that air, all the pots, the stuff of the past going through his head in the finite moment before the big forever?

Glenn Barkley, 2016

Performance Anxiety Pot, 2016, earthenware, 55 x 47 cm

Pot with Gastric Banding and Olive Leaf Pattern and Scabs, 2016, earthenware, 44 x 25 cm

Model for a Large Garden, 2016, earthenware, height 30 cm, 14 pieces

Sad But True Vase, 2016, earthenware, 33 x 25 cm

Lumpen Berry Pot with Blue and White Spots, 2016, earthenware, 17 x 16 cm

Large Fluoro Pot with Extruded Curlicues, 2016, earthenware, 56 x 40 cm

iwishiwaswhereiwouldbe, earthenware, 2016, 19 x 3 cm

sameolsameol, 2016, earthenware, 55 x 53 cm

Rustic Bowl with Leaf Decoration, 2016, earthenware, 9 x 18 cm

Melancholic Gin Shaped Bottle with Leaf Pattern, 2016, earthenware, 28 x 11cm

iwishiwaswhereiwouldbe, 2016, earthenware, 41 x 56 x 16 cm

Greek Style Mangrove Pot, 2016, earthenware, 41 x 13 cm

Traditional Forms Beaker People Pot (For V Gordon Childe), 2016, earthenware, 50 x 50 cm

Melancholic Blue Bowl, 2016, earthenware, 14 x 21 cm

The Wedding Song of Sun and Rain, 2016, stoneware, 34 x 36 x 38 cm

a restless hungry feeling, 2016, earthenware, 76 x 26 cm

idespair, 2016, earthenware, 36.5 x 16 cm

Cactus Group II, 2016, earthenware, height 16 cm, 16 pieces

Melancholic Stem Cup With Stones, 2016, earthenware, 17 x 20 cm

allthingsmustpass, 2016, earthenware, 65 x 32 cm

Show Pony (lettertoalan), 2016, earthenware, 59 x 21 cm

Crystal Lake Bowl with Tokens, 2016, earthenware, 3 x 26 cm

Love in the Ruins, 2016, earthenware, 31 x 40 cm

Melancholic Vase, 2016, earthenware, 26 x 14 cm

Topiary Cup with Tokens, 2016, earthenware, 11 x 10 cm

6 Chambered Gourd Pot, 2016, earthenware, 62 x 13 cm

Fluoro Pot with Truncated Curlicues, 2016, earthenware, 56 x 22 cm

Mudlark Pot, 2016, earthenware, 75 x 25 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #22, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #29, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #31, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #32, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #25, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #34, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #30, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #23, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #26, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #33, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #28, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #27, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #24, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

On The Museum’s Ruins #21, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 22 cm

Collage with Infection, 2015 - 2016, collage on paper and synthetic polymer on frame, 34 x 26 cm

4 Chambered Moon Pot, 2016, collage on paper, 26 x 21 cm

Boy and the Moon Pot, 2016, collage on paper, 14.5 x 14 cm

Large Vase with Pox, 2016, collage on paper, 21 x 14 cm

Fluorescent Beaker Style Pot Painting, 2016, synthetic polymer on board, 25.5 x 25.5 cm

Moonpot Painting, 2016, synthetic polymer on board, 35.5 x 36.5 cm

Large Moonpot + Collection, 2016, collage and synthetic polymer on paper, 38 x 56 cm

lolz4trolz (Beware of Darkness), 2016, collage and synthetic polymer on paper, 42 x 56 cm

Greetings from Bernard Leach’s Hate Cave, 2016, acrylic, collage and texta on paper, 62 x 63 cm

Moon Pot in Landscape (for Bernard Leach), 2016, collage and synthetic polymer on paper, 70.5 x 53 cm

But What is Right (WTF/Tradtional Form for V Gordon Childe), 2016, collage and synthetic polymer on paper, 71 x 53.5 cm

don’taskmenuthinaboutnothin (Outlaw Blues), 2016, collage and synthetic polymer on paper, 71 x 54 cm

Archaeology (for V Gordon Childe), 2016, collage and synthetic polymer on paper, 76 x 56 cm

itsallright, 2016, earthenware, 2.5 m D

Gl en n B a rk le y its al l r i g h t 26th October - 26th Novemeber, 2016

Utopia Art Sydney 2 Danks Street Waterloo NSW 2017 Telephone: + 61 2 9699 2900 email: utopiaartsydney@ozemail.com.au www.utopiaartsydney.com.au

Utopia Art Sydney 2 Danks Street Waterloo NSW 2017 Telephone: + 61 2 9699 2900 email: utopiaartsydney@ozemail.com.au www.utopiaartsydney.com.au