Ella Barclay – I Had To Do It
Image: Ella Barclay, I Had To Do It, installation view. Photo: Joy Lai
Sydney-based artist Ella Barclay conjures an eerie techno dystopia in her multidisciplinary solo show I Had To Do It, currently on show at UTS Gallery.
Incorporating mist and liquids, video projections, bespoke electronics, plastics, paint, and old and new lighting technologies, Barclay explores our omnipresent encounters with technology. The artist bridges the disconnection between our abstract idea of computer systems and their reality by reimagining the complex backend of mysteries that lies behind the sleek and convenient tools and communication technologies we have come dependent on.
The viewer is immersed in this science-fiction world as they traverse the exhibition on a guided trajectory, each new artwork serving as a different encounter with the artist’s heated imagination. The centrepiece, a suspended tank work in which projected figures appear to emerge from the swirling mist.
Barclay has exhibited extensively in Sydney and internationally. I Had To Do It was developed at the Australia Council’s ACME studio in London, and in residence at Casula Powerhouse. As the place where creativity and technology meet, the UTS Gallery is the perfect place to house this brilliantly unsettling and wholly contemporary body of work. (AM)
Until Nov 25; Mon-Fri 12-6pm, Sat 12-4pm. UTS Gallery, lvl 4, 702 Harris St, Ultimo. Info: art.uts.edu.au
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