Gallipoli Art Prize 2023 – Finalist
6-8 Atherden Street, The Rocks,

Exhibitions: 2022

The paintings and prints below represent a selection of works from my Solo exhibition at duckrabbit, Sydney, 23 November 2022. The exhibition featured large format paintings, prints, drawings and assemblages.

Russell Barker (A.K.A. rsjbarker)

I always start an artwork with an open mind and trust the inadvertent fall of paint or random placement of lines, shapes, color to guide my process. The result is a mixture of abstraction and representation, constructed using drawing, paint, power-tools, printed matter, text or whatever else it takes to develop and convey thoughts and ideas onto a page or canvas/board.

I’m motivated by the visual stimulation of landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, interiors, politics, social and environmental influences. My daily drawings and notations are populated with everyday observations both dramatic and mundane mostly in diary form on small paper notepads and usually drawn in multiples of up to 10 at a time using whatever media is available to me, traditional and non-traditional materials.

As a city-dwelling-urban artist, it’s rare for me to visit the Australian bush or the outback. Perhaps because my connection to the Australian landscape (and any landscape more than 50kms outside of the Sydney CBD for that matter) is minimal, I can feel deeply emotional, nostalgic, energized, overwhelmed or melancholic whenever I’m in it, or see it in film or print, or when I’m overseas, away from my inner-city digs, or arriving home flying over the desert. Sometimes, these emotions provoke notetaking for referencing later. However, while I often use these drawings, notes, ideas, visual cues in my studio when I’m about to start on a new project, it’s never my intention to reproduce or enlarge them in an effort to recreate or contrive the emotion of the moment at scale, or invoke an actual landscape, place, scene or location or a thing. It’s simply a starting point, a method of beginning a journey without regard to horizons, direction, intersections, boundaries, projections, points, beginnings, endings or even media. This might seem self-indulgent, lazy, directionless and highbrow. The reason I take this approach is to try to allow the creative process to reveal itself as a unique entity, an experience, an organism in it’s own right, not of, or from something. The approach is reinforced by avoiding horizon lines, perspectives, skies, hills, clouds, dwellings, roads, flora and fauna and apparitions/chimeras/illusions caused by accidental drips or other landscapey tropes – to maintain the integrity of the artwork’s otherness.

Below: duckrabbit, March – April 2022

The exhibition was held in conjunction with David Hawkes in Late March and early April 2022 at the duckrabbit gallery in Redfern, Sydney. These paintings and assemblages were produced over a period of 12 months. Working in isolation in my Sydney studio during the lockdowns caused by the pandemic, my main company was radio, music, podcasts, books and my own thoughts. Each work is a reflection on some daily or global event based on a news story or something that I’ve been preoccupied by. Ukraine, pandemic, politics, environment, art. Remaining works from the exhibition are available in this site’s store

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Below: Coaster Coaster – Sunday Arvo Art Salon – October 2019

This exhibition was held in 2019 at the Sunday Arvo Arts Salon in Refern, Sydney and was held alongside Paul Livingston. We exhibited 220 drawings (110 each) in this pop-up exhibition which had a total duration of 2.5hours. The selection represents the entire contents of my selection in order of display. Remaining drawings and drawings done since are available for purchase in the Store section. A digitial print (on archival canvas, mounted and framed) featuring selected drawings from the exhibition combined with recent drawings is also available in the website store.

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Mary Place Gallery – October 2018

This exhibition was held at Mary Place Gallery in Paddington Sydney in October 2018 alongside 2 other artists – Leonie Khourie and Dean Manning. Works sold from the exhibition are all marked as Private Collection. Remaining works from the exhibition are available in the website store.