RSJ Barker

In 1996 I held a solo exhibition at a gallery that had been setup by a friend who’d asked me if I’d like to contribute. The gallery was set up at the back of the Paddington Hotel.

"Marlene", acrylic and ink on paper. Exhibition invitation for Back Bar Gallery Paddington 1996

The section of the hotel where the gallery was is now the bottleshop. It was quite a small place with a bar down the middle and so it didn’t take much to make the space look like it was really crowded. The exhibition consisted of fifty A5 (145mm x 210mm) drawings that were produced in sketch books over the previous years.

Untitled - Archibald Fountain Study - 1993

This exhibition included not only images of the area around Darlinghurst, but also a selection of images that utilised digital technology combined with traditional painting such as that used in the exhibition’s invitation image. The title of the exhibition “Faith Error Stack” was a reference to error message that was generated by the printer when an incorrect file had been sent to the network and could not be printed, which resulted in the header on the error message reading Faith: - a reference to the title of the image titled Faith, Error: a reference that there was an error in the system and Stack: a reference to the way in which the printer handled the file. After that line “Faith Error Stack” the printer would then generate pages and pages of binary code.

Untitled-Man Chasing Hat 1993

The exhibition also included a range of landscape drawings and  a smattering of images that crossed over from the previous Gallery 19 Exhibition of St Francis of Assisi images that had been re-worked.

Landscape with Church 1994