HEDWIG BARRY



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Hedwig Barry (b.1969, Bloemfontein) is a Cape Town-based painter and sculptor. Through her work, she investigates the relationships between perception and intuition, using scale, density and colour to create visual worlds as rich in their outward associations as they are in their internal complexity.


Barry is deeply curious about the ethics of artistic practice, and how these extend beyond issues of representation to questions of care, responsibility, ecology, community and personal alignment. Her background as a producer and collaborator in the fields of art publishing and moving image inform her present thinking around the interconnectedness of communities of practice. Her work draws on the knots of relations that hold together societies, families and chosen communities, and searches for a visual language for these interdependencies.


Visually, Barry works in an abstract idiom that questions the classical delineation between foreground and background, or figure and ground. For her, all is at once ground and groundlessness. Her painterly surfaces evoke open fields and bodies of water, expansive and at times even bewildering. Inspired by Gertrude Stein’s notion of landscape dramaturgy, Barry proposes all-at-once surfaces that are not predetermined by particular subjects or representations. Rather, each work invites the viewer to stage their own perceptual ‘event’ in the action of looking.

In 2020 Barry completed an MA Fine Arts at the Wits School of Arts, and was commissioned to produce a body of large-scale outdoor sculptures of BMW’s South African headquarters in Midrand. She has also produced large-scale sculptures in public space, one of which, Crumple (Jeanette Schoon) (2021) is housed permanently in the collection of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.  Her work has been presented at the Nirox Sculpture Park, Constitution Hill, The KwaZulu Natal Society of the Arts, the AVA Gallery and at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, amongst other venues. She will take up a Fellowship with the Ampersand Foundation in New York City in May 2026.



HEDWIG BARRY



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Hedwig Barry (b.1969, Bloemfontein) is a Cape Town-based painter and sculptor. Through her work, she investigates the relationships between perception and intuition, using scale, density and colour to create visual worlds as rich in their outward associations as they are in their internal complexity.

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Selected sculptures
My practice experiments with how meaning can inhabit form, colour and material. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in my sculptures. The large-scale “crumple” sculptures transform industrial aluminium sheets into forms resembling crumpled paper. Their all-over surfaces, rendered luminescent with automotive paints and enamels, affirm the visibility and presence of that which is overlooked or discarded. Likewise, the tumescent forms of a series of sculptures made from polyurethane foam transform this humble material, inviting us to look at it with curiosity and wonder.

Several of my crumple scultpures were installed at the Nirox Sculpture Park, both in the gallery and outdoors throughout the park grounds, during my solo exhibition at Nirox in 2022 (Here is Where We Meet, 2022). I have also created crumple works for the Spier Light Art Festival (also 2022) and for outdoor public spaces, including the site of the Constitutional Court of South Africa in Johannesburg.


"Seat", 2022, automotive paint on alumnium, 120 × 120 × 60 cm. Photo: Alexi Portokallis "Mother", 2022, automotive paint on aluminium, 390 × 260 × 270 cm "Angel of History", 2022, automotive paint on aluminium, 145 × 60 × 122 cm "Sharkboy", 2022 Automotive paint on aluminium, 180 × 110 × 210 cm. Photo: Alexi Portokallis "Crumple (Jeanette Schoon)", 2021-2022, automotive paint on aluminium, 3,4 x 2 x 2 m "Night Crumple", 2022, automotive paint mied with phosphorescent powder on aluminium, 2,2 x 3,5 x 3 m "I am an Island", 2022, enamel and automotive paint on polyurethane, 75 x 70 x 15 cm cm "Boyfriend", 2022, enamel and automotive paint on polyurethane, 57 x 55 x 58 cm "Gutsy", 2022, enamel and automotive paint on polyurethane, 50 x 50 x 12 cm "I am a Rock", 2022, enamel and automotive paint on polyurethane, 22 x 10 x 13 cm "Crumple: The Feeling of Being At Sea", 2021, enamel on pewter, 10 x 10 x 15 cm. Photo: Liz Whitter "Crumple: Multicoloured Sampler", 2021, enamel on pewter, 15 x 18 x 12 cm. Photo: Liz Whitter