Artist
Kate Barry

© Kate Barry, Legs, Too, 2015. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada
www.katebarry.ca

Kate Barry is currently based on the the unceded, traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations in Vancouver, Canada.

Barry is a performance artist whose work investigates queerness, subjectivity and embodied practice through painting, drawing and video. She has contributed over 20-years to working in artist-run spaces committed to the exhibition of artwork outside the mainstream. She has performed and exhibited in galleries and festivals throughout Canada and internationally, including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Open Space (Victoria), 7a*11d Festival of Performance Art (Toronto), World Pride Toronto, and the Rider Project (NYC). In addition, she has self-produced work at the Musee d’Orsay (Paris, France) and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto).

From 2011–2014 Kate Barry was a member of the board of directors for FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto). She was the project manager for More Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (edited by Johanna Householder and Tanya Mars) and she worked as the archival and research associate for the book, Wordless: The Performance Art of Rebecca Belmore. She was as the project lead for the MPCAS, an urban screen launched by grunt gallery in 2019. Currently, she is a sessional faculty at Emily Carr University of Art & Design and serves on the board of directors of the Mutual Aid and Reciprocity Fund (MARFEC) at ECU. From 2013 until 2016, she wrote a popular Blog called Performance Art13 that focused on the Toronto performance art scene from a visual art perspective.

Barry has curated several shows including: PLACE for the MPCAS, grunt gallery, Vancouver, 2019–2020; Nature Lover: Performance for the Camera (Fabulous Fringe Film Festival, Durham Region, 2017); 11:45PM, FADO Performance Art Centre’s Emerging Artist Series (Xpace Gallery, Toronto, 2014): and White Wedding to the Snow: Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephen’s performance art wedding (Ottawa, Canada, 2010). Kate Barry’s video work is represented by Vtape in Toronto, Canada.

Performance
Queer Lines (For Agnes) by Kate Barry

In the spring of 2021, I was given the opportunity to make a video performance through an at-home residency from where I reside in Vancouver through FADO Performance Art Centre’s at-home residency series, Performance Resolution(s).

Queer Lines (For Agnes) is a performance for the camera that marks pandemic time through the abstraction of the Pride Flag. I use my body in various unexpected ways to paint acrylic washes on an unstretched canvas on the ground. I have developed an “embodied painting” approach that combines performance art actions with mindfulness strategies to create a work that balances form and content, emotions, and ideas. A soundscape made from this process of embodied painting compliments the video work.

This process of investigation concentrates on the subject-object binary through an embodied practice. I use my own body in my performances to experience and blur the tension between myself as both a subjective and objective body. To do this, I employ paint brushes I make from my own hair, paint, a straw I use to reenact prehistoric cave painting methodologies by blowing paint onto the canvas and toothbrushes as some of the items to work with to paint the canvas.

Primarily, Queer Lines (For Agnes) takes art historical cues from abstract painter Agnes Martin, utilizing an abstraction of the horizontal lines found in her later work. Inspired by her resistance to Patriarchal norms realized in both her painting and her writing, I find her contributions to a definition of queering conventions provocative and see this work as working from her queries, evoking new strategies and questions for the future. The work is about queer survival during a global pandemic by creating a ritual for protection for all members of the LGBTQAI2S+ communities.

Thanks to FADO, Lisa G for editing and Kage for the soundscape and all your support.

Queer Lines (For Agnes)
video, 18:30, 2021
Distributed by Vtape, Canada

Performance
11:45 PM curated by Kate Barry

FADO Performance Art Centre’s 2014 Emerging Artist series, co-presented with Xpace Cultural Centre.

ARTISTS
Anthea Fitz-James (Toronto)
Emma-Kate Guimond (Montréal)
Jessica Karuhanga (Toronto)
Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle (Montréal)
Rah Eleh (Ottawa)

Durational performance is a mode of live art where the artist works directly with the medium of time. Over the course of hours, days or longer the performer and the audience can experience a physical, mental, spiritual and/or emotional transformation. Durational performance functions to bring the performer and the audience into the moment; time is made palatable and visceral. Artists like Tehching Hsieh, Alastair MacLennan, and most famously, Marina Abramović, demonstrate how durational performance art can use mental and physical endurance to challenge the commoditization of art by offering an experience of art that is ephemeral by nature. 11:45PM will present a collection of durational works, spread out over the course of March, throughout the gallery.

The 2014 Emerging Artists Series was curated by FADO board member Kate Barry, in consultation with Xpace and a committee of local artists (including Xpace Director Amber Landgraff, Videofag founder Jordan Tannahill, theatre artist Audrey Dewyer, and Xpace intern Humboldt Magnussen.

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Unraveling the Daughter’s Disease: Secrets, Knitting and the Body by Anthea Fitz-James
March 8 @ 12:00pm–6:00pm
March 9 @ 1:00pm–5:00pm

In Time with a Body: Duration as a Performance Practice
March 13 @ 7:00pm
Performance artist, curator and FADO co-founder Paul Couillard gives an informal lecture on duration as a performance practice. His talk will share insights from his creative work as well as performances by other artists, including a reflection on his 1999 curatorial project TIME TIME TIME, a year-long series of 12 works by various performance artists, each a minimum of 12 hours long. 

digestion/liquidation by Emma-Kate Guimond
March 16 @ 12:00pm–8:00pm

The trip, and the fall, and the lost heap of longing by Jessica Karuhanga
March 19–22 @ 1:00pm–5:00pm daily

6 hours 6 minutes 6 seconds by Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle
March 28 @ 6:00pm–12:06:06am
For this performance, the audience is encouraged to bring with them, or to drop off at the gallery anytime during gallery hours from March 8–28, items from their homes that represent evil to them. Can be any kind of object, from a banal household item to a talisman. Object must be wrapped, so the contents are not known. All objects will be used in the performance.

Ululation by Rah Eleh
March 29 @ 12:00pm–6:00pm

What Happens After Midnight: Artists Panel
Moderated by Tanya Mars, in conversation with the artists and curator Kate Barry
March 29 @ 6:30pm

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer