Barbara Campbell
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Statement
Barbara Campbell is an Australian artist who works primarily in the medium of performance. Since 1982 she has worked with the specific physical and contextual properties of a given site, be it art gallery, museum, atrium, tower, radio airwaves or the World Wide Web, in developing and presenting her works.
After completing undergraduate degrees in fine arts and art history, Barbara Campbell was awarded a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney in 1998. She has undertaken residencies at Griffith University, Queensland, The University of Melbourne, The University of Sydney, the Australia Council studios in Santa Monica and New York and the Power Institute studio in Paris. In 1994 the NSW Ministry for the Arts awarded her the Women and Arts Fellowship.
In 2004 she received one of four Fellowship grants awarded by the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council for the Arts to develop and present her ongoing durational performance, 1001 nights cast.
1001 nights cast continues the artist’s interest in the mythologised lives of certain women, both fictional and historical, whose biographical details are still held in the contemporary imagination. This strand of her work began in 1988 with Carmen (prelude) at First Draft Gallery, Sydney. Since then the subjects of her work have included Ariadne, Arachne, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, Lizzie Borden, Tokyo Rose, Patty Hearst, Eleanor Coppola, Julia Margaret Cameron and Trukanini. The survival strategies of Scheherazade are the inspiration for 1001 nights cast.