John Barry (he/him)
John Barry’s work explores memory and working-class culture; location, sound, change and language permeates the work. John’s art practice concerns the human using the simple principles mediated by observation, communication, often collaborative aiming to be emotive about belonging and collective memory; a practice shaped by working and living with often stigmatised communities.
Lockdown with feathers
Project Links
Other Voices Other Rooms
Other voices other rooms investigates the role of an artist working within the community of West Princes Street, Glasgow. Using field recordings, workshops, interviews and sound constructions (Soundwerkz) other voices other rooms captures a core essence of a diverse, dynamic community that has been wounded. Important themes that emerged during the artist’s practice were healing/spirituality, seasonal change/ritual and creative celebration. Other voices other rooms used low scale community driven interventions to bolster shared memory and experiences. Using a range of research strategies, including those instigated by the community – mapping of historical events, derives, psychogeography and Goethe’s principle of exploring the realm of the organic; the artist creates imagined realities, located on West Princes Street, that intend to maintain community memory and understanding of dynamic change in a framework of continuity.
Project Links
The living room
The living room reflected a period of intense longing and confusion at been relocated, at points roofless staying in atrophying B&Bs in a city with new culture, language and history. Feeling noise, dust, confusion, change. Being outside, an observer, without direction a period of upheaval magnified by forced distancing due to covid. I found through research that this renewal was matched by the dynamic changing nature of Glasgow’s communities typified by the Bruce Report and exemplified by City Council building projects such as the Basil Spence designed Hutchenstown B. The living room is imagined as an interactive performance space and installation.
