James Barth: The Clumped Spirit is the third in a series of annual $80,000 commissions, funded by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, and delivered in partnership with leading Australian galleries, to support mid-career and established artists to develop and present major new bodies of work. Previous instalments were TextaQueen: Bollywouldn’t at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Gadigal/Sydney, in 2022, and James Nguyen: Open Glossary at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2023.

Barth studied at Queensland College of Art, graduating in 2014. She trained as an oil painter and her works play on traditional genres of portraiture and still life but exceed them. Using 3D-modelling software, she creates stages, props, and avatars, which are then transmuted into screen-printed oil paintings and animated videos. In her paintings, screen-printed images are brushed to soften them, combining the virtual and the painterly.

Much of Barth’s work explores the themes of self-representation and embodiment. It contends with her experience as a trans-woman, navigating the constant pressures of visibility and vulnerability. Her works often depict domestic scenes, sometimes showing idealised imagery, sometimes showing bodies overwhelmed by decay. Mounds of organic material, such as fruit peel and leftover food, are left to sweat and decompose in her uncanny world, which is imbued with a sense of ennui and listlessness.

In addition to new paintings and video, The Clumped Spirit makes a dramatic move into sculpture. Barth’s 3D-printed sculptures are coated in zinc, recalling petrified figures from Pompeii.