Art in the Park, Marrickville

"Flight" - a whimsical piece made for Art in the Park in Marrickville in about 2004 - not sure of the date.  The feather could represent a captive bird, or what remains after the bird has flown.

More from the archives

These images are from "The transience of soap" at the old Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney in 2001.  It was a collaborative installation between Rose Ann McGreevy, Barbara Halnan and Warren Summers who orchestrated sound elements.

From the archives.

Black Box: installed at Articulate Projectspace in the end of year show in 2014.

Coming shortly after the death of my long-term partner, the construction of this little piece perhaps represents the coming out of a very dark time in my life. Colour was an important aspect of the work – the choice of yellow as symbolic perhaps of light, the three shades of the strings – all this was important at the time. A bright yellow light comes from the interior of the box (a found object) and the strings soar beyond its confines.

 Study in Blue/Green  2016
Acrylic on MDF panel 35x35 cm.

 Study in Yellow/Red 2016
Acrylic on MDF panel 35x35 cm. 
In these small panels I was playing with the kinetics of colour - the movement of the viewer past the works causing shifts from one colour to the other. 

Small works for Olivier Nouvellet, Paris

 Study with Blue 2018 
Acrylic with collage on board.

Study with Yellow 2018
Acrylic with collage on board.

These two small works have been sent to Paris to be shown in Galerie Olivier Nouvellet, Rue de Seine Paris in September 2019.  Exhibition organised by Christine Boiry.

Drawing Collective at Osnabruck

About drawing within the framework of concrete art-making.

Playing with two, three, sometimes more elements, working with the way in which these elements interact. For me the keyword is 'exploration'. A drawing is a piece of work that may perhaps lead on to something else, and I think it is for this reason that drawings I do are rarely 'one-offs'. One thing leads to another, and another and each stage may open up possibilities which also need to be explored, but in the end the drawing exists as a thing in itself.

The starting point: the first mark - the "what if" factor: in the case of these drawings, the first mark was an angled line across or down the page. I have been  interested in the idea of slippage - a form broken by a break which allows one part to move in relation to the other, thereby breaking the balance, the monumentality, of the whole form, hopefully creating a tension within the work.

Within these parameters there are still variations possible: should the form float in space, or be anchored by the edge of the paper; how do the forms in the drawing relate to each other; should the form be symmetrical, or a-symmetrical? The question of proportion, the visual "rightness" of the overall image - what works and what doesn't - a totally subjective judgement perhaps.

These mixed media drawings (from a set of six related works) are to do with the notion of "slippage" - an exploration of what happens visually if a shape is broken into parts by a line cutting across it.

 Barbara Halnan March 2019