David Rosetzky in Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video

David Rosetzky's work, Portrait of Cate Blanchett, has been selected for the Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video in New York. Dress Codes is a global survey of photographers and video artists who critically examine fashion's relationship to art and other social phenomena. Rosetzky will be exhibiting alongside artists such as Cindy Sherman, Yto Barrada, Thorsten Brinkmann, and Lorna Simpson. The exhibition will be on view from 2 October 2009 - 17 January 2010.

Guy Benfield solo exhibition at Art in General, New York

Guy Benfield’s Night Store will be an eight-week long performative installation in Art in General’s Storefront Project Space.

Drawing on tropes of modernism, faux ceramics, sculpture, painting, collage, and references to alternative collectives, Benfield transforms the architecture of space from white-box gallery to pottery showroom, to artist studio, and eventually overcrowded storage-space.

Through various situational episodes in this non-stop evolution, Benfield explores the relation between current artistic practice and supposedly defunct strains in performance including ritual, transcendency in Aktionism, and live-action painting. Imagining the trauma of pottery as an expressionist dialogue, Benfield considers the space of the storefront as a kiln in which failure and unpredictable success commingle while pretense is burned away.

Ms & Mr at Sydney Underground Film Festival and The Physics Room, Christchurch

Ms & Mr have a solo show, Physics is Pate, opening at the Christchurch contemporary art project space The Physics Room. The exhibition preview is Tuesday 15 September and runs until 11 October.

Ms & Mr also have a screening of their work The Lovecats (2007) as part of the Sydney Underground Film Festival. The work will feature in the Recycled Cinema Program on Sunday 13 September.

Jon Cattapan on 'Artists at Work' is now online

ABC's Artscape program 'Artists at Work: Jon Cattapan' is now available to view online. This half hour documentary traces Cattapan's history, working processes and recent works after his sojourn with the Australian Defence Forces in East Timor. Click here to view.

Rosie Westbrook performing at the Jon Cattapan preview, Friday 21 August 6-8pm

During Jon Cattapan's preview on Friday 21 August 6-8pm, there will be an ongoing solo musical accompaniment by Rosie Westbrook.

Over the last few years, Rosie has been touring the world as bassist with Mick Harvey (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) in his solo band.

Most recently, Rosie wrote music for an ABC TV Arts documentary about the art of Jon Cattapan, 'Artists at Work: Jon Cattapan', which screens nationally on ABC1 on 25 August, 2009.

Jon Cattapan on ABC Artists at Work

ABC's Artscape presents 'Artists at Work: Jon Cattapan' a half hour documentary tracing Cattapan's history, working processes and recent works after his sojourn with the Australian Defence Forces in East Timor.

The documentary will air on ABC1 Tuesday 25th August at 10pm and be repeated on ABC2 30th August at 7pm.

Julian Dashper (1960-2009)

Kaliman Gallery is deeply saddened by the loss of Julian Dashper, New Zealand based artist and friend.

With over 140 solo exhibitions worldwide and a career spanning 30 years, Julian pursued an artistic vision of elegance and refinement that was never without a sense of humour.

Kaliman Gallery had the honour of holding multiple exhibitions by Julian in both curatorial and artistic roles. Julian imbued his practice with a passion for art history, and his work stretched from the capturing of a fleeting moment in an audio recording, to the refined simplicity of his paintings and objects.

His energy, generosity and knowledge was an inspiration to anyone who had the privilege of meeting him. His absence will be noted in New Zealand, Australia and around the world. He will be missed.

Julian is survived by his partner Marie and son Leo.

Julian Dashper at Auckland Art Gallery

The work of Julian Dashper will be showcased as part of For Keeps, an exhibition of the Auckland Art Gallery's recent acquisitions. Curated by Natasha Conland, the exhibition includes a range of both New Zealand and international artists. The exhibition runs from 18 June until 12 July.

Kate Rohde, Ms & Mr and the Kingpins at Fbi Radio Art Auction

As part of Fbi Radio's fundraising events, an art auction will be held at the MCA Foundation Hall on Friday 3 July. Artists Kate Rohde, Ms & Mr and the Kingpins have all contributed works to the auction which will be on view from 6pm.

Ms & Mr at Gosford Regional Gallery

Ms & Mr are currently exhibiting as part of the group show Vertigo at Gosford Regional Gallery. The exhibition opens tonight at 6.30pm and runs until Sunday 26 July. The duo will be exhibiting alongside seven other contemporary Australian artists.

The Kingpins / Cat of Nine Lives at Wollongong City Gallery

The Kingpins' survey show Cat of Nine Lives is now on at Wollongong City Gallery. The exhibition is a collection of works from the last nine years of practice and will be on display until 19 July. The artists will conduct a guest lecture alongside the exhibition on Wednesday 10 June from 3.30 - 5pm.

David Griggs at Green Papaya Art Projects, Philippines

David Griggs' latest exhibition New York London Paris Rome Manila City Jail is currently on display at Green Papaya Art Projects, Quezon City, Philippines. The exhibition runs until 30 May and has already featured in The Philippine Star.

The Kingpins at Wollongong City Gallery

The Kingpins' survey show Cat of Nine Lives opens this Friday at Wollongong City Gallery. The exhibition is a collection of works from the last nine years of practice and will be on display until 19 July. The artists will conduct a guest lecture alongside the exhibition on Wednesday 10 June from 3.30 - 5pm.

Julian Dashper at Laure Genillard Gallery, London

Julian Dashper is exhibiting alongside Australian artist John Nixon at Laure Genillard Gallery in London. The exhibition brings together two artists who are both are concerned with ‘painting’ as a subject rather then a process. Dashper will show, among other works, Untitled (Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue # 5), which is based on the legendary work by Barnett Newman. The exhibition runs until 18 June 2009.

Maria Cruz at PABLO Fort Gallery, Philippines

Maria Cruz has a solo show at PABLO Fort, Fort Bonifacio in the Philippines. The exhibition, Your daydreams reveal something about your ethnic background, opens 17 April and runs until 16 May.

Guan Wei at 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba

Guan Wei has presented his painting installation 'Rising Sea Level' at the 10th Havana Biennial in Cuba. The Biennial runs from March - April and the theme for 2009 is Integration and Resistance in the Global Age. The curators for this Biennial are Margarita González, Nelson Herrera Ysla, José Manuel Noceda, Ibis Hernández Abascal, Margarita Sánchez Prieto, José Fernández Portal and Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda. See the blog for more images of Guan Wei's installation.

Guan Wei at PKM Gallery, Beijing

Guan Wei is currently exhibiting as part of the group show Anamnesis and Extrapolation at PKM Gallery, Beijing. His painting "Chinese Map of the World" (2008) is exhibited alongside the work of eleven other artists. The exhibition runs until 26 April.

Guy Benfield at Hendershot Gallery, New York

Guy Benfield and Daniel Noonan will be exhibiting together at Hendershot Gallery in New York. Both are Brooklyn-based Australian artists and this will be the second collaboration they have taken on together. The exhibition opens 13 March and runs until 11 April.

David Rosetzky to exhibit in the ICP Triennial of Photography and Video

David Rosetzky has been invited to participate in the Third Annual International Centre of Photography Triennial of Photography and Video in New York.

The exhibition will feature works by approximately thirty international artists chosen by the ICP curatorial team - Vince Aletti, Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, and Carol Squiers. Rosetzky's 'Portrait of Cate Blanchett' has been selected for the show. The exhibition opens 18 September, 2009 and runs until 3 January, 2010.

Guan Wei at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei

Guan Wei is currently exhibiting as part of the group show 'Spectacle - to each his own' at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei. His installation 'Heaven and Earth' will be on display until 12 April.

David Griggs is announced a finalist in the 2009 Archibald Prize

David Griggs' self portrait 'Zoloft Nation' has been selected as a finalist for the 2009 Archibald Prize. The Archibald Prize is one of Australia's longest standing and most celebrated art prizes.

Griggs' painting can be viewed as part of the Archibald Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 7 March - 24 May, followed by The Regional Tour of the exhibition around Australia.

Ms & Mr at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

Ms & Mr will be participating in the exhibition Song of sirens at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne. Curated by Bala Starr, the exhibition will also showcase the work of 4 other artists. The exhibition opens Tuesday 24 February and runs until Sunday 3 May.

Maria Cruz and David Griggs at MO_Space, Manila.

David Griggs and Maria Cruz will be exhibiting new work at MO_Space in Manila. The group show will feature four painters with ongoing connections to the Philippines. The exhibition opens Saturday 28 February and runs until 30 March.

Del Kathryn Barton & Lara Merrett in The Newtown Diaries at Delmar Gallery

Delmar Gallery curator Nick Vickers has selected artists Del Kathryn Barton and Lara Merrett as exhibitors in his forthcoming group exhibition. They will be exhibiting alongside ten other artists in the exhibition The Newtown Diaries. The exhibition dates are 1 - 29 March and the gallery will be open to the public 12pm - 5pm Wednesday - Sunday. The exhibition opening will be held Saturday 28 February from 3pm-5pm.

Sally Smart exhibits 'The Exquisite Pirate' at the Embassy of Australia, Washington

Tonight Sally Smart will open her installation The Exquisite Pirate at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC. The exhibition will be on display until 3 April 2009, and will be open to the public 10am - 2pm weekdays.

David Griggs in the Jakarta Biennale 09

David Griggs will be exhibiting as part of the Jakarta Biennale due to open in February 2009. Curated by Agung Hujatnikajennong the biennale is titled 'Fluid Zones' and will be divided into two sections, one of which will show works that results from residency and trips to Southeast Asian region, and the other will feature contemporary Southeast Asian artists. Griggs will be exhibiting a selection of works made during his visits to Manila.

Del Kathryn Barton in Optimism at GOMA, Brisbane

Del Kathryn Barton is exhibiting as part of Contemporary Australia: Optimism, the first in a major new triennial series of contemporary Australian art at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Barton is showcasing a brand new suite of sixty-two works on paper that make up the series 'i am flesh again.' The exhibition runs until 22 February, 2009.

David Griggs in Serial Killers at Green Papaya Art Projects, Quezon City

David Griggs has been selected to participate in the group exhibition 'Serial Killers' which opens this week at Green Papaya Art Projects in the Philippines. The exhibition considers serialisation as a conceptual strategy in the work of nineteen artists. 'Serial Killers' runs from 6 December - 20 December.

The Kingpins & The Gossip at Art Basel Miami with Deitch Projects

The Kingpins and The Gossip will headline for Deitch Projects launch event at Art Basel Miami 2008. The collaborative project Conversation Piece was commissioned by Deitch Projects (New York) for their renowned Art Basel Miami opening event. Held at the Raleigh Hotel in South Beach, the Deitch Projects event is the legendary annual launch party of Art Basel Miami.

For one night only The Kingpins and American band The Gossip will combine forces to present a live performance. Normally two distinct artistic collectives, Conversation Piece will allow a dialogue between the creative groups, a conversation of re-mixing music, re-contextualising lyrics and sampling musical tropes.

The installation for their live performance, designed and created by The Kingpins, will reflect this exchange of ideas with giant speech bubbles constructed from the text designs found on hundreds of t-shirts. Fashion tees, protest tees, rock n roll tees and corporate tees are sewn together to create a tapestry of quotes. Political statements, cheap slogans and fan regalia will merge in a cacophony of voices that is Conversation Piece.

Kaliman Gallery artists in Current

Art & Australia has now released Current, a massive publication profiling 80 contemporary artists from Australia and New Zealand. The book features the practice of eleven Kaliman Gallery artists: Del Kathryn Barton, Stephen Birch, Shane Cotton, Adam Cullen, David Griggs, Brent Harris, The Kingpins, Tim McMonagle, Ms & Mr, David Rosetzky and Glenn Sorensen. For more information see the Art & Australia website. On sale November 25.

Shane Cotton recipient of 2008 NZ Laureate Award

Shane Cotton has been awarded one the prestigious 2008 New Zealand Laureate Awards in recognition of artistic achievement. Presented annually to five recipients in the New Zealand arts arena, the award includes a $50,000 donation to support their practice and future projects.

Julian Dashper and The Kingpins in Artspace 24/25

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Artspace, Sydney there will be a 3 day event commencing 30 October - 2 November. The project includes twenty-four one-hour exhibitions. As part of this project Julian Dashper's work will feature on Saturday 1 November and The Kingpins will exhibit on Sunday 2 November. For more details see the Artspace website.

Guy Benfield at CAPC, Bordeaux

Guy Benfield will be exhibiting in the group show Axis Bold as Love which opens at CAPC Musee d'art Contemporain de Bordeaux on 3 October. Curated by Liv Barrett and James Deutsher the exhibition runs until 7 December.

Julian Dashper at The Suburban and PS1/MoMA

Julian Dashper has a solo exhibition opening at The Suburban in Chicago on 12 October. He has also curated a group show 'The" which includes the work of Ralf Brog, Alicia Frankovich, John Nixon and Marie Shannon, it opens in The Suburban's second gallery space on the same date.

Dashper's work has also been selected for a major survey exhibition to celebrate Minus Space's 5th anniversary. Curated by Phong Buiof the exhibition opens at PS1 Contemporary Art Centre / MoMA, New York on 19 October.

New monograph on Jon Cattapan

Kaliman Gallery are pleased to announce the release of Possible Histories a new publication which follows the career of artist Jon Cattapan from the 1970s through to the present.

The author, Chris Aucliffe has compiled an extensive collection of interviews and commentaries from Cattapan, which along with the numerous illustrations of his source materials and working processes, provide a deeply insightful record of the developments of his practice.

Published by The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Publishing, the book is an impressive 230 pages, full colour and generously illustrated.

This publication is a comprehensive and substantial resource for followers of Cattapan's work. Autographed copies of the book are now available through Kaliman Gallery for $50 + $10 postage and handling.

The Kingpins at QUT Art Museum

The Kingpins video work, Sydney Infinity (2005), is on exhibition as part of Under the Influence (art & music) at QUT Art Museum, Brisbane. Curated by Simone Jones and Megan Williams the exhibition runs from 11 September - 16 November.

Ms & Mr at Lake Macquarie Art Gallery

Ms & Mr have been selected to participate in the group exhibition 'Music makes the people come together', which opens at Lake Macquarie Art Gallery later this month. The exhibition will feature Videodromes for the alone: The Lovecats (1991/2007), and Ms & Mr's music video for Australian band Youth Group's latest single Two Sides. Music makes the people come together is curated by Brett Adlington and runs from 26 September - 26 October.

Guy Benfield joins Kaliman Gallery

Kaliman Gallery are pleased to announce our exclusive representation of artist Guy Benfield in Australia. Benfield is one of Australia's most prominent performance and installation artists. He exhibits regularly in Europe and the US, and his solo show XVOLTA at Kaliman Gallery earlier this year was enormously well received. Currently based in New York, Benfield returns to Australia regularly to participate in a variety of museum and gallery exhibitions. To view images of Benfield's work, go to our website.

Nadine Christensen wins 2008 Fletcher Jones Art Prize

Nadine Christensen has been awarded Geelong Gallery’s 2008 Fletcher Jones acquisitive art prize valued at $30,000. The award winning entry, Untitled (Tiled floor) combines a number of disparate objects from the natural and constructed worlds. The painting is on exhibition alongside the 37 other finalists at the Geelong Gallery until 26 October.

Adam Cullen in the Blake Prize 2008

Adam Cullen's controversial painting, Corpus Christi (women only bleed)2008, has been selected as a finalist for the Blake Prize for Religious Art. Established in 1951 the Blake Prize is the oldest prize in Australia dedicated to spirituality, religion and cultural diversity. Held annually it is a $20,000 non-aquisitive prize. The finalist exhibition opens Thursday 4 September and runs until Saturday 4 October.

Ms & Mr in the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award 2008

Ms & Mr have been selected to exhibit as part of the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award 2008. Their work, Mystic Mnemonic (this film is forming crystals) 1989 / 2008, was part of the preliminary exhibition this month and the finalist exhibition will take place in September. The overall winner will receive an acquisitive award including a $10,000 cash prize, an around-the-world airline ticket and a residency at the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen, the Netherlands.

Ms & Mr in Primavera 2008, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Ms & Mr have been selected for the prestigious Primavera 2008 exhibition which opens next month at the MCA, Sydney. The collaborative duo will be presenting a large scale installation of new work as part of the annual exhibition. Curated by Hannah Mathews Primavera 2008 opens 19 September and runs until 30 November.

Julian Dashper at The Physics Room, Christchurch

Julian Dashper has been included in 'My eyes keep me in trouble' a touring group exhibition produced by TEAM CCNOA, CCNOA Brussels, Belgium. The exhibition premiered in April 2007 at Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem (NL) and will travel this August to The Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand.

The exhibition is curated by the German artist and curator Tilman, and will feature the work of thirty artists whose practice revolves around the idea of non-representational, reductive or concrete art as the essential approach towards art-making.

The exhibition opens Tuesday 19 August at 5.30pm and runs until 13 September.

Ms & Mr / Terminus Projects: BAZAAR 08 / Biennale of Sydney

Ms & Mr will have a stall at the Terminus Projects: BAZAAR 08 being held this Sunday 6 July, 11am - 7pm at the Clare Hotel, Ultimo. As a Biennale of Sydney satellite event there will be surprise guests and performances, artworks and happenings.

Del Kathryn Barton / 'the whole of everything' billboard / Melbourne

A billboard scale reproduction of Del Kathryn Barton's painting "the whole of everything" (2007/2008) will be unveiled in central Melbourne this evening. David Walsh, owner of the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, who recently acquired the original painting for his collection, coordinated the project. The billboard will be on public display for the next four months at the Republic building, corner of Queen and La Trobe Streets, Melbourne.

Julian Dashper at ICAN, Newtown

Julian Dashper has been included in latest exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown (ICAN) which runs until July 6. Scheduled to coincide with the Sydney Biennale and titled "The Most Meaningful Art of Our Time" (What Goes Around Comes Around), the exhibition uses satire to critique the role and purpose of the Biennale.

Kaliman Gallery on Facebook

Kaliman Gallery is pleased to announce it's official page on Facebook. By becoming an online friend of Kaliman Gallery, Facebook users will be invited to gallery events and exhibitions. With an already established following the presence of Kaliman Gallery on Facebook has proven to be a popular form of communication with the online art community. If you are already a member of Facebook and would like to join Kaliman Gallery on Facebook, click here.

David Griggs / Preview Thursday 19 June, 6-8pm

Del Kathryn Barton / The Age / Saturday 31 May 2008

Winning the Archibald, Australia's prestigious portraiture prize, did little to silence Del Kathryn Barton's self-doubt, writes Gabriella Coslovich. Childhood is an intensely powerful time, its influence lingers on long after we have shed our milk teeth, crayons and soft toys. For Del Kathryn Barton, this was particularly so. Her enchanted and strange childhood would indelibly shape her life. Back to that idyllic and testing time can be traced so much of who she has become and the art she makes. Barton lived on an angora goat farm with her two siblings and her parents, eccentric teachers who swapped an urban existence in Sydney's Castle Hill for the rural setting of East Kurrajong, buying a rundown, white-ant-ridden, crumbling old place that they demolished and took 15 years to rebuild.

"It was an odd, magical, crazy, beautiful childhood," Barton says. "We lived in a tent for two years, then a cottage, and I was the first member of the family to move into the house and there were no walls, and I had a horse."

Magical though it was, her childhood was marred by a mysterious psychological disturbance which doctors could not diagnose and which she called her "thing". "My thing is happening," she would tell her mother, as she lapsed into the frightening mental state. Barton rarely speaks about this childhood torment. Almost too soon, we have slipped into delicate territory. Sitting at her kitchen table, sipping coffee, Barton pauses as she searches for the words to explain her "thing".

"I think I was a deeply phobic child and I had severe anxiety that manifested in these weird episodes where I would hear voices and my vision would do very strange things, the light would shudder, or it was too bright and I had to close my eyes. It was terrifying, actually, and not something I could control."

Drawing compulsively was her way of dealing with "the thing". When the young Del drew, she could lose herself, without losing her mind, and "the thing" could not touch her.

"The act of drawing was where on one level I felt safest as a child, but also most engaged, always this feeling of incredible potentiality, which is a really electric place to be," she says.

Barton has the blessing and burden of being one of Australia's most collectible artists. Her works have been setting record prices at auction, topped by the $162,000 paid for Please...don't...stop at Bonhams and Goodman last November. Her recent Melbourne show at Karen Woodbury Gallery sold out before it opened, with prices ranging from $20,000 to $65,000. Several works, including the vast painting The Whole of Everything, and a suite of drawings, was picked up by one of her most high-profile fans, the eccentric Tasmanian collector David Walsh, who will be opening the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart late next year. With its sex and death theme, MONA is the
perfect home for Barton's paintings.

But her works are not for everybody - idiosyncratic, graphically sexual, animalistic, other-worldly, in your face, sublime, beautiful and disturbing, they polarise people. Some collectors want the status that goes with having a Barton, but not the overt sexuality, the open-legged girls casually displaying their rippling, ripe pudendas, the multi-breasted goddesses with their attendant familiars.

"We get a lot of clients who want a Del Barton but they don't want tits or vaginas," says her Melbourne dealer, Karen Woodbury.

To meet Barton and to listen to her talk about her art, her life, her fears and joys is to deepen one's appreciation for her work and the authenticity of its genesis - the anatomical flamboyance of her paintings is not gratuitous. Barton's layered, complex, talismanic paintings are not a contrivance; they emanate, to borrow the title of one of them, from "the whole of everything", the whole of her. The works are subtly or
subconsciously autobiographical, at times alluding to some of her own struggles to come to terms with body and mind, at others simply reflecting her love of pattern and texture - a love that has an uncanny link to her past.

To those who are not avid followers of contemporary art, Barton would be best known as the winner of this year's Archibald Prize, with the painting, You are what is most beautiful about me, self portrait with Kell and Arella. Featuring her two children, Kell, now 5, and Arella, 3, the family portrait is less provocative and confronting than much of Barton's oeuvre. But it has its own tensions and riches. Kell and Arella are straddled between their mother's thighs, emerging from them, creating a totem, a potent trinity, redolent of Hindu paintings, and symbolic of the cycle of life. At the
totem's head is Barton, in her trademark designer glasses, a staunch protective spirit, her arms outstretched, above the outstretched arms of her children, the three of them forming a multi-armed, multi-headed deity. The painting will be on show in regional Victoria from today, when an exhibition of Archibald finalists opens at the Bendigo Art Gallery. Eventually, the work will hang in Barton's house, probably at the top of the stairs. And yet, when she finished the work, Barton considered it a failure. Winning the Archibald made no difference to her harsh self-assessment. "Starting (a painting) is effortless and so joyous and I think I am really lucky that way. Finishing is so tough for me because I'm always disappointed."

Others are not so severe in their judgements. Later, when I visit the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see her Archibald winner in the flesh, I overhear an older woman in a wheelchair marvelling at the sight of it: "Gee, there is so much work in that, so much work. Those eyes are fantastic. It's just amazing, what an imagination. So decorative. She can't have done much sleeping, I don't think. She's got a Sturt desert pea in there."

The first thing Barton did after winning the Archibald was cancel her next show. Set to open at Sydney's Kaliman Gallery in December, it has now been postponed to May next year. Barton's astounding popularity, now driven at least in part by the promise of making a sure-fire investment, has created an immense workload and pressure. Even though she is a confessed workaholic, Barton needed time to reflect and some respite from her astoundingly labour-intensive technique. Her energy had become "contracted", she says, not a good space from which to create.

Barton guards her privacy and rarely gives interviews. I am fortunate enough to be invited into her decayingly grand home in Sydney's grungy inner west. It is a large, two-storey, ramshackle Victorian with a gently sloping backyard, enclosed by a tall wooden fence. She lives here with her two children and partner, Chris, with whom she shares some traits - they are both workaholics and love the refuge of home - and some differences. He is a cerebral numbers man who works in finance, she the emotional artist.

"We couldn't be more different and I think that's why we're so happy together," she says.

The home they have made together is warm and inviting and filled with an eclectic collection of contemporary art. In the lounge room hangs an extremely magnetic photo. It features a young mother in what appears to be a tribal ethnic costume, a multicoloured, multilayered outfit, and wearing an enormous, fabulous headdress. The woman is holding a baby. Behind her is an intoxicating background of clashing colours and textures, diverse fabrics, wild, knitted asymmetrical strips, misshapen scarves,
creating a delirious tapestry. It slowly dawns on me that it is Barton herself in the photo in the exotic costume, holding Arella. But it is the story about that extraordinary knitted background that is truly evocative - the photo holds a remarkable key to Barton's own work.

The knitting, Barton explains, is the work of her late beloved grandmother, whom she called Baba. Her name was Nancy Barton and hers was an arduous life. She grew up in Tasmania and married late, to a hard man, after having nursed her dying mother. Nancy raised three children, one of them Barton's father. In the last 10 years of her life she developed dementia and would sit all day crocheting and then, as her hands stiffened, knitting.

"I lived with her for two of the three years I was at art school and she was a total scream. A diabolically hard-core Christian but very liberal in her own way . . . I have bags and bags of her wonderful creations, and her colour sense I find inspirational. It actually blows my mind," Barton writes, in a later email.

"I feel very sad writing this stuff down. She was full of spirit and song in a hard life. She was very loved within the church community and people just gave her bags of random wool. She picked up a lot from fetes. She was a crazy bowerbird. My work has in part always attempted to celebrate the history of women's craft and art making."

Barton's paintings, with their elaborate, decorative surface, continue in the path of Baba. She reclaims for women a wild, intuitive, supernatural space.

Some critics have panned Barton's works for being overly decorative. When she reads such things, Barton takes solace in the fact that one of her favourite artists, the British Chris Ofili (who gained notoriety for his painting The Holy Virgin Mary, featuring elephant dung and magazine cut-outs of genitalia), is also a prize decorator.

"You couldn't get a more decorative aesthetic than that, and yet the work is really hard-core. "That's when I'd open my book on Chris Ofili and say 'I love you, Chris
Ofili, and thank you'."

Barton never doubted she would be anything other than an artist, and she persisted, despite her father's disapproval. Her only moment of doubt occurred at art school but that had more to do with the method of teaching than her own lack of faith or ability. She had hoped university would give her practical artistic skills. This wasn't exactly the case. She also found it hard to engage with the hard-drinking, carousing student life.

"I left home and it was like, OK, I don't take drugs, I don't drink alcohol, I want to work really hard because I want to be an artist, and that just really wasn't the culture at art school, it was about going out and being crazy. "I'd just been through a childhood of working out that I'm actually not crazy . . . alcohol, and anything that altered my consciousness, was terrifying to me."

Much of her technique was developed after she left university, through a rigorous and painful journey of experimentation, she says. She had to discover how different types of paints work, how gouache dries and leaves a velvety surface, how watercolour dries in a luminous way and reflects the light. She needed to learn how to layer different types of paints without them cracking. She found, too, that to obtain the immaculately flat surfaces that she loves, lightweight polyester canvas was best - but presented its own problems because of the scale of her works.

"You don't get taught any of this at art school. Well, I didn't. It has taken 15 years of experimentation in the studio to get to this point." Continuing to experiment is of utmost importance, especially now that she is in mid-career: "That's the point that works can become very mannered, and that is death for me."

Barton's paintings must be seen up close to be fully appreciated. Their surface is an intricate maelstrom of obsessive mark-making - from the meticulous dotting of her backgrounds to the minute detailing of the hair or fur on her female figures, every strand drawn out, every vein on a leaf, every erotic tendril of a flower. Her canvases are an orgy of colour and movement which somehow retain a compositional balance. The paintings are so labour-intensive that, following Woodbury's advice, Barton has taken on a studio assistant, Lauren Brincat, an artist in her own right.

"After the last show, Karen said to me, 'You're going to kill yourself', and I really was suffering from a lot of back pain."

Barton's studio, in a large, light-filled room on the ground floor, is like an insect's nest, or a bowerbird's, or a witch's coven. Signs of compulsive activity are everywhere, the stuff of spells and alchemy. Paint runs down the walls like psychedelic rain, the floor is a splattered colour-field, jars are filled with beads of shiny black and sunburst orange, baskets crammed with tubes of paint. Reference books lie about the floor and sink into fusty armchairs: The Lyrebirds of Sherbrooke, Wildflowers of Western Australia, Book of Australian Native Orchids. Polaroid collages are stuck to the walls - photos of Barton's coolly angelic son Kell, naked among a forest of oriental lilies.

Propped up against the walls are massive works in progress that almost scrape the lofty ceilings of her home. The works are signature Barton, canvases populated with women of alien beauty, eyes as glassy as a lagoon and as unfathomable as the ocean, staring blankly, as if in ecstasy, untouchable, untameable. Her doe-eyed girls are self-contained, they do not meet the viewer's eye. For all their overt sexuality they are not objects for men to ogle.

"It's not about the male gaze at all, that's the very last thing that it is." But why are they so sexual? "I could only give a very complex answer to that. It's lots of things. It's definitely about revealing the longing in me to be that empowered physically and to be that comfortable in my own skin, which I'm not."

Barton has spoken before of her former struggles with an eating disorder. Her paintings are partly about women's ambivalent attitudes towards their own bodies - however, she emphasises that her works are not "political". "What I'm most haunted by, in a way, is why can't I actually feel beautiful? What has happened in life that I can't feel that way, even though my partner adores me.

"Of course, I would not want you to misunderstand me. I have moments in the studio when I'm feeling very beautiful, because I'm in my body and comfortable in my skin, in that moment."

Archibald Prize 08 is at the Bendigo Art Gallery until June 29.

Julian Dashper / Group show / Sydney College of the Arts

'My eyes keep me in trouble'is a touring group exhibition produced by TEAM CCNOA, CCNOA Brussels, Belgium. The exhibition premiered in April 2007 at Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem (NL) and will travel this June to the Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, Sydney.

The exhibition is curated by the German artist and curator Tilman, and will feature the work of thirty artists whose practice revolves around the idea of non-representational, reductive or concrete art as the essential approach towards art-making.

The Sydney presentation will coincide with the Sydney Bienniale and will open on Thursday 5 June, 6 - 8pm, at the Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, and continues until 1 August.