About

Hedwig Barry's abstract visual language is characterised by restless yet careful marks, a striking sense of movement, and a strong commitment to colour. The overwhelming surfaces of Barry’s works seduce the eye while disintegrating the figure-ground convention which is so embedded in our ways of reading the visual. In Western art history, the relationship between figure and ground, or the subject and the background, dominates the narrative of painting. According to this logic, the background is always subordinate to, and in service of, the subject, or the “main” content of the painting. …