Bianca Vern-Barnett

OPENING/MEET THE ARTIST Saturday 14 September, 11am – 5pm ALL WELCOME

MEET THE ARTIST Saturday 28 September 11am – 2pm including Artist Talk 1pm. Free event. 

These paintings are about three narratives that I have been engrossed with for a few years; the history of Antony and Cleopatra, the reign of Elizabeth I and the story, music and dance of Tchiakovsky’s ballet, Swan Lake. The narratives and events of history, story, music and dance unfold through time; sometimes a lifetime, sometimes a few hours. Painting is like that too. The making of a painting is layered and unfolds through time. There are disappointments and dramas, there is trouble and the resolution of trouble. There is elation. Bodies of work can stir within for years before you know how to bring them out. 

In a practical sense, I used the painting’s layers as a way to organise the ‘chapters’ of the story, abstracting the images and thoughts I had about the events, plot, history and movements of each narrative. The earlier events are in the earlier layers so that the past recedes. As I built the work and motifs appeared and developed, I began to see that the work also investigated my own stories. Motifs from the telling of these stories had become motifs for the events of my own life. As I worked, I was interrogating why these stories had engrossed me and by the time the works were nearing completion, I began to see all my own stories reflected there too and history, story, music and dance – it all became personal. 

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY 
Bianca Vern-Barnett is an artist based in the Hunter Valley, Australia. She is the winner of the 2024 Hunter Emerging Art Prize for painting. In 2023, her work was selected as a finalist in the National Emerging Art Prize, The Hornsby Art Prize and the Newcastle Club Foundation Painting Prize.

Vern-Barnett creates abstract works which use layers to depict the chronology of a variety of historical, cultural, and personal narratives. She is a graduate of UNSW College of Fine Arts. This is Bianca’s first solo exhibition at Straitjacket.