Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2020
Julie Barratt
Australia
juliembarratt.wordpress.com
About
Julie Barratt is an Australian artist who lives and works on
Darumbal country in the tiny remote community of Zilzie on
the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Julie is a visual
artist, curator and arts industry professional whose practise
encompasses printmaking, photography, artist books, works
on paper and installation. In addition to her solo practise, she
collaborates with other printmakers, book artists, writers,
sound and performance artists.
Julie is passionate about community arts and artists,
inclusion and accessibility and this is apparent in her work
as an arts industry professional who has worked for many
years in the sector as a curator, regional manager and
producer. She is regionally located and globally connected,
and has worked in places as far flung as as New York, Seoul,
Wilcannia, Bristol, and Kathmandu, where she set up art
studios for young deaf Nepali women as a stepping stone
into employment.
Predominant themes in Julie’s work lie in narrative explorations
of the human condition, personal, family and place histories,
and the consciousness of objects. Her works are often sitespecific,
responding to environmental energetics and often
include elements that are labour intensive and contemplative.
Living in close proximity to the ocean and the elements has
provoked a renewed awareness of our fragile environment
and the subtle dependencies between water, life and nature
in our eco-system. Julie’s most recent works on paper are a
collaboration with the tide pools at the bottom of her garden.
The Isolation Files
Borders were closing, and all the while the smell of fresh
bread baking in the kitchen and snow softly falling, rendering
the landscape soft and dreamy, added to the very surreal
feeling of being in some sort of a dream! I was handed a
sheath of papers with the latest updates from Australia and I
continued to focus on my creative work as a diversion to the
ever escalating feelings of panic, of being ‘stuck’, of fear of
family members becoming sick. In this mindset my creative
work gradually developed over the following weeks into a
Unique Artist Book titled ‘The Isolation Files’.
The Isolation Files Artist Book is a visual diary of my thoughts
and feelings during a month of turbulence and escalating
world fear, rendered through the mediums of photographs,
screen and stencil printing, stitching and mixed media. I
began the month of my Arteles residency reading the sublime
poetry of Mary Oliver, by the end of the month I was reading
constant ABC updates on COVID 19.
With all flights currently suspended to Australia at the time of
writing , I contemplate life in the Finnish woods and how best
to utilize this unforeseen gift of time...
breathe in breathe out.