My fascination with Cycladic civilization [3300BC-2000 BC], ignited by my first travels to Greece in the 70s, has remained with me to this day, and become a major reference for my new body of work. The process of ‘crafting’, with slow, deliberate, accumulated efforts, using basic materials like wire, plaster, and paint, is for me as much the building of a personal narrative as it is a commentary on the precariousness and discrepancies of contemporary life. Inspired by Lucian, the Greek rhetorician and satirist, I cast a playful eye on the intricacies and absurdities of relationships and our connection to the  “made world”, the menacing simulacra that surround us.

Borrowing from Egyptian iconography, my figures have a ‘society’ and ‘language’ of their own, each representing a history that is both momentous and negligible in the wider scheme of things. What motivates my work is the extent to which each ‘voice’ is audible and each ‘story’ is validated, despite the impermanence of its nature and the context of its existence. Ultimately, I am concerned with a kind of archaeology of memory and the desire to preserve the perishable and reclaim the perished.

Barry Thompson
Melbourne 2007