Del Kathryn Barton is a Sydney visual artist whose work has garnered both critical acclaim and public attention. She is one of Australia’s most collectable artists and has works in numerous private and public collections, including BHP Billiton, Artbank; the National Gallery of Australia, and UBS.
In 2008 Barton won the Archibald Prize for her self- portrait You Are What Is Most Beautiful about Me and then again in 2013 for her portrait of Australian actor Hugo Weaving.
A serial collaborator Barton is not afraid to cross borders into other creative fields like fashion, animation and film and has regularly joined forces with Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales, the duo behind the fashion label Romance Was Born, on projects including a children’s show which inspired her 2013 What I Am Also.
What I am Also Del Kathryn Barton. 2013 Synthetic polymer paint and gouache on polyester canvas 243 × 183cm. roslynoxley9.com.au
In 2014 Barton collaborated with fashion director Jillian Davison, photographer Emma Summerton and costume designer Alice Babidge on the cover shoot for Vogue Australia’s ‘Fashion meets Art’ edition, featuring Australian actor Mia Wasikowska.
Then in 2015 a stop-motion animation (with screen music by Sarah Blasko) adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1888 romantic parable, The Nightingale and the Rose, that she co-directed with filmmaker Brendan Fletcher, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival (picking up an AACTA award along the way). The experimentations with film have persisted. Del’s first live action short film, RED, a striking surrealistic story about female power with Cate Blanchett as the lead–which she wrote and directed–premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2017 ahead of her first major solo exhibition, The Highway is a Disco at Melbourne’s NGV.
In 2015 Barton also began her collaboration with Melbourne’s Third Drawer Down Studio, a company that commissions contemporary artists to create everyday items, to fulfil its vision of making art accessible.
Human Dress Clutch x Del Kathryn Barton via Third Drawer Down
Amidst this prolific border-crossing one constant over the years in the oeuvre of Del Kathryn Barton has been her collaborations with fashion designers Romance Was Born, exemplified at the 2017 closing show at Australian Fashion Week.
Backstage Romance was Born Merceds Benz fashion week 2017 Photo by sonnyphotos.com
In 2017 Barton told Imogen Dewey from Broadsheet that she ‘doesn’t believe in delineating fashion from “serious” art. “I always find categorisation so tedious. Everything’s collapsing in a really great way.”
Sources: broadsheet.com.au theaustralian.com.au ngv.vic.gov.au vogue.com.au. smh.com.au