Barker, Lucy. 2023. On Line Clothes Swap. Interactive sculpture. Sculpture by the Sea. Sydney, Australia
Australian Financial Review photograph (no attribution) of Lucy Barker's Online Clothes Swap 2023 at Sydney's Sculpture by the Sea, 2023
I had thought my post on the puppetry theatre work Dimanche would be my last for this online dossier. However this whimsical, performative work caught my eye in this morning's paper (yes I read the Australian Financial Review - how else will I know what people (men) in power are doing).
Barker's interactive work invites visitors to engage by pegging up or removing items of clothing. The symbolic image of shirts hanging on the clothes line creates a link back to my earlier post on Anne Ross's Muybridge, Hills and Me. 2001. It also extends my thinking to an exhibition I have not yet seen, James Nguyen's Open Glossary at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). Nguyen's work features shirts crowded on clothes lines strung across the gallery, evocative of my experience of clothes lines hung high between buildings in Venice. Of course, his work is about so much more than merely a means of drying clothes. To start with, clothes are a form of employment, protection, identity and in some cases, social or professional mimicry (Michelson 1987).
Lucy Barker's work is designed for an interactive audience experience. The humble Hills Hoist is familiar and non-threatening. Most people will know of it, or at least be familiar with the concept of hanging out clothes. Some will no doubt scoff and ask how this could possibly be art, but will at least question its meaning and possibly be secretly amused.
Barker's work yet again reminds me of the many levels on which art operates, and the benefit of whimsy and absurdity in engaging viewers.
Bibliography:
Michelson, Annette. 1987. "October : the first decade, 1976-1986." 58-74. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
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