Vanessa Barbay

Petra: Which are your favourite coffee, gelato and pasta places?

E & M: Our daily destination is Campo Santa Margherita, arguably one of the most famous squares in town which is characterized by being a marketplace and meeting spot for residents of Venice. On Saturday mornings there you can find small fish, flowers and fruits, and vegetable stands.

Our favourite place for a quick coffee and the best pastry and just around the corner from our shop, is Pasticceria Toletta.

The best local gelato is Gelateria Nico, located at the shore of the Giudecca Canal. It is arguably the best spot to enjoy your gelato facing a breath-taking panoramic view.

Also, just across our beloved Ponte delle Maravegie and a bit further down on the Fondamenta San Trovaso, there stands Schiavi. Formally known as Cantine del Vino già Schiavi, it is without a doubt our favorite ‘bacaro’ (Venetian word for wine bar). Its also the best place for ‘cicchetti’ (typical Venetian tapas).

Our favourite place for lunch is the family-run Antica Locanda Montin. It’s a local hidden gem of a place serving traditional Venetian food and they have a beautiful courtyard garden.

Petra: What do you hope for people to experience with your glass?

E & M: For us the sensory experience is very important. Our glass has peculiar textures and the sensory experience of the surface of the glass throughout all our production is one of the most significant aspects that define our style and is like the signifier of our whole collection. Since the birth of Micheluzzi Glass we have been experimenting with different techniques to achieve this effect, both visually and to the touch, as well with different colours. These give an incredible spectrum of effects when exposed to light and reflections.

Petra: What are you working on now?

E & M: We are always experimenting with new designs and techniques. It’s quite a long way from the ideas and first tests to the final product that we decide to actually sell and promote. So in addition to our current production, there are always a few projects that we are developing. However, we never know when they will actually come to life. We are not in a rush for new projects, as we are quite busy as it is. However, we like to keep the creative flow going. Not all our ‘ideas’ and our ‘tests’ work at first, but maybe they might work later with some changes - they just need to sit there for a while to find their way.

Petra: Do you sell all over the world?

E & M: We sell internationally and we appreciate that we have an international public access, not only our shop, but also our online store (website and Instagram). We like to do the same thing - travel to new places and discover beautiful things. Although now with websites and Instagram you can find things easily remotely and you can enjoy also a satisfactory shopping experience from afar. We think this is very much the focus of many businesses today and it’s actually an interesting channel to create and communicate interesting content which is accessible from anywhere.

Petra: What brings you most joy?

E & M: The core of our work, which also is the essence of Venice itself - always in a floating balance between past, present, and future - is to bring together tradition and innovation, continuity and change. What we love most about our job is to be able to be part of this balance; of this ‘story’; and to channel and project the treasures of Murano and Venice into to World, while also possibly leaving our little trace. To be ambassadors of such excellence and beauty is just the greatest joy and honour for us.

Visit: https://www.micheluzziglass.com/ Images: © Micheleuzzi Glass

I remember the moment I met Vanessa at the SeeChange Arts Festival in Jervis Bay, NSW a few years ago standing in front of a ‘fish shroud’ sparkling in the winter sun. Her work was nothing like I’ve ever seen. I ended up even purchasing one of her shrouds for our home collection to remind us of Jervis Bay here in Canberra. It certainly provides a provocative conversation in our dinner parties! I’m so happy that Vanessa agreed to let me into her magical world and a very special family place connected to her father. This is art alchemy celebrating the life of its objects - life after death!

Petra: Where were you born?

Vanessa: Bankstown, a suburb of Sydney, on the 28th November 1972. Then on the 20th December 1972 my mother’s brother was tragically killed in a car accident in Sanctuary Point, NSW aged 19, and so she moved immediately back home to Vincentia, a town in the Shoalhaven Region of coastal NSW, with my father and I.

Petra: Where do you live, and what’s the story of your orange house?

Vanessa: I live in Vincentia after 20 years living in other places and feeling homesick. I returned to my home village and my childhood sweetheart Darren in 2013 before my father passed away in 2015. We built a home together on land my father had helped Darren purchase when we were young (and engaged). Returning to Darren and Vincentia was my midlife crisis. It was at this time I suddenly developed an obsession with the colour orange. I painted the inside of our new home terracotta (an earthy orange) and bought orange appliances and décor. It is a very happy colour.

Petra: What influenced you growing up and what role did our incredible nature play?

Vanessa: My mother’s family moved to Vincentia in the 1950s when it was all pristine bushland. Mum has lived in this beautiful place most of her life and still does today. I am a ‘Greenie’ and am extremely distressed by overdevelopment in the Shoalhaven. As the only children living in Vincentia for a time, mum and her brothers became territorial when tourists visited. She and I are both saddened by the dramatic changes in Vincentia – especially the destruction of the swamp when the Bayswood Estate was created. My father’s fascination and creative engagement with the natural wonders of the Shoalhaven made the biggest formative impact on my philosophy and artmaking.

Petra: Your dad created an amazing body of work during his lifetime, what role did his Hungarian heritage play and what was his presence in local community?

Vanessa: When my father suddenly migrated from Hungary as a teen, he was about to start an apprenticeship at a zoo. Instead, he moved to Australia and had to gain employment as a plumber. Once he had settled down with mum in Vincentia, he began collecting the butterflies and insects of Australia. This led to an apprenticeship with a Hungarian taxidermist at the Sydney Museum and his lifelong practice as a taxidermist. He worked with the Booderee National Park preserving animals for their information centre. He was known as the ‘spider man’ due to his other fascination - Australian spiders. He learnt to collect and milk funnel web spiders, one of Australia’s most deadly. He began breeding them and would preserve spiders in resin as gear lever knobs and paperweights - selling them at a stall at the local Lady Denman markets. He was a well-known eccentric character in the community, in addition to being a local plumber.

My Hungarian (Magyar) grandfather and Hungarian (Czigany) grandmother were also creative practitioners. Grandfather was a jeweller and photographer. He identified my talent for drawing as a child and set me challenging drawing projects. My grandmother wove complex tapestries and carpets designed by my grandfather and played the violin. She had goats as well. She gave birth to my father in Zalaapáti, Hungary near Lake Balaton where her people, the Czigany or ‘Horse Gypsies are from. Her maiden’s name was Czigany. I long to visit this sacred place of my ancestors.

Petra: You studied at the wonderful ANU – what was your experience and how did it shape your creative practice?

Vanessa: The lecturers in painting at the ANU under the leadership of Ruth Waller were excellent. My practical supervisor was Vivienne Binns OAM. Viv pushed me out of my comfort zone representing mummified animal bodies from my father’s collection into experimentation with decomposing animal bodies (the antithesis to taxidermy practice). I created my first ‘shroud’ or decomposition print under her guidance in 2019 when I completed my honours in painting. This led to a PhD project developing the first shroud paintings ever created in art (to my knowledge).

Petra: You were lucky to ‘live’ and work in an Indigenous community - how would you describe the experience and the importance of ochres?

Vanessa: My childhood featured close friendships (and love) with Indigenous peers and formative teaching and guidance from local Indigenous elders, notably Laddie Timbery and Guramaa (George Brown Snr.). Aside from my father, my childhood idol was Indigenous actor David Gulpilil, and I would create illustrations for the stories in his dreaming book. My dream was to one day visit his country in Arnhem Land. This dream came true during my PhD when I received a research scholarship to travel to, and live in Kunbarlanja, Western Arnhem Land. It was here I learned how to collect, prepare and apply traditional ochres from Kunwinjku traditional owners. I was taken to sacred ochre sites for each colour and told the associated dreaming stories. My ANU theory supervisor Nigel Lendon also had conducted research about a Yolgnu artist from Arnhem Land, David Malangi. Nigel was an excellent guide when I wrote my dissertation on the artistic history and mythopoeic thinking of Kunwinjku artists in Western Arnhem Land. Ever since this life-changing experience I have worked with ochres gifted to me or collected with permission from both local and interstate locations.

Petra: What does your creative process look like from beginning to end?

Vanessa: I have built up an extensive ‘tool kit’ of options in my studio process over 30 years of professional practice. The central process developed during my PhD includes a ‘plein air’ stage when the ‘shroud’ is created. An installation in an outdoor environment –usually on private property owned by fellow artists with farm or bush land – allows animal bodies to decompose on canvas attached to sprung bed bases and secured with mesh to deter predators. The weather, surrounding trees, and other animals add to the marks made on the canvas during the month-long period required to allow the animal body to decompose onto the canvas. This creates a bodily impression via fluids, fur or feathers, flesh and bones.

Following this period, I take away the mesh and photograph the animal bodies post-decomposition before removing the animal remains and collecting the stained canvas. I steep the canvas in vinegar briefly and then hang it out to dry and cure in the sun and wind for another month. Also, sometimes I boil the canvas in eucalyptus leaves using an old copper cauldron my grandmother used to use for washing clothes in Vincentia before she had a washing machine. Both processes kill bacteria. When ready the canvas is then stretched onto a wooden frame and sized with rabbit skin glue. This step also helps adhere any bodily remains to the canvas.

Now the work is ready for the studio process which involves first deciding if stitching is needed to repair or add texture to the bodily stain. Then the post decomposition photographs of the animals are projected onto the canvas in order to produce an accurately sized representation of the disintegrated body on or near the body stain, so they are in conversation materially and metaphorically. This is my communion with the dead subject, who has literally collaborated with me. I usually paint this projected image using bitumen and oils, but sometimes I include watercolour or ochres.

The next step involves a decision about whether to paint the ground – which is sometimes heavily stained with mould, leaf litter or bark, etc. Usually, I paint into the ground using white ochre (Delek) or gesso. Sometimes I use a repeated motif of a nest or husk and paint in the negative space created by its projection, or the silhouette of a dead tree. In all my shroud works, the raw canvas is evident and becomes a key element within figures depicted.

Petra: How do view work with your shrouds and what’s the message in them?

Vanessa: As a ‘Greenie’, nature and the animals living in it are the most precious to me in the face of human overpopulation and mass animal species extinction. I view myself as a literal recorder of animal death due to human activity (habitat destruction and roadkill).

Petra: Music has been part of your family and you are continuing with your orange drums in your band, so what does music mean to you?

Vanessa: My grandfather played piano, my grandmother violin, and my father drums. He was a rock ‘n roll drummer in Surf City, Sydney during the 1960s. He even supported the legendary rocker, Johnny O-Keefe and was invited to play on Bandstand, a National TV show. Unfortunately, some of the band members did not show up and so they missed their cue! His band names were the ‘Vampires’ and the ‘Soul Survivors’. My dad taught me drums when I was very young, and I am still playing at age 50! I am addicted to playing - it is essential to my wellbeing. My current bands are called ‘Living with Ghosts’ (an original instrumental collaboration with fellow painter Chris Jansch) and ‘Swamp Runners’ (playing Blues standards with Greg and Mark). Yes, I bought an orange drum kit recently (A Gretsch Catalina Maple – Amber Glaze!)

Petra: What are you working on now?

Vanessa: Currently, I have three paintings in process: a leather jacket and star fish shroud painting to replace a sold work from a sea creature set (a group of works that fit together like an irregular jigsaw when hung); a mummified animal painting symbolising the catastrophic impact of global warming; and a new direction in the depiction of animal death – a painting of tiny colourful shells traditionally collected and worn by Yuin women (bought from Wreck Bay Indigenous storyteller, Auntie Julie Freeman). This last painting also features a mummified dolphin Darren and I found washed up on a remote local beach.