Barbara Campbell
Live performance Galatea (1996). Curated by Leisa Shelton-Campbell | Fragment 31.
Barbara Campbell, Galatea. Venice International Performance Art Week (2014). Photograph by Monika Sobczak.
Born in 1961 in Beaudesert, Queensland, Australia. Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Barbara Campbell has performed in both hemispheres, in museums, galleries, public buildings, photographs, on film, video, radio, and the internet, in silence and with words, still and moving, since 1982. She has had a long fascination with the visual and adaptive qualities of language (including its absence and translations). Her current work looks at the co-production of performance between species: humans and migratory shorebirds. The Department of Performance Studies at Sydney University produced a survery exhibition of her 1997-2001 performances with an accompanying catalogue, Flesh Winnow (Power Publications: 2002) and she is now an Associate Artist with the Department. In 1994 she was awarded the NSW Women and Arts Fellowship and in 2004 she received an Australian Council Fellowship to develop and produce her online durational work, 1001 nights cast.
At the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK 2014, Campbell presents the live performance Galatea, refocusing our attention on the ability of the central female character of the Pygmalion myth to shape herself to the desires of her audience and through this, gain authenticity. In Campbell’s version, Galatea must deliver her story in perfect Italian, yet the story is rooted in post-Colonial race relations of the Australian outback.
Curated by Leisa Shelton | Fragment31.
+ LIVE PERFORMANCE
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS, its arts funding and advisory body.