Artist and designer with a diverse creative practice centring on an interest in working in public space

Kathy Barber is an artist and designer with a diverse creative practice that centres on an interest in working in public space. Kathy joined the Cape Farewell Art/Science Expeditions to the Arctic in 2004, 2007 and 2008, broadcasting daily updates to the website via satellite. On her return she co-curated Earth, Wind and Fire as part of Whitechapel’s Late Night series.

Her work Here Today, created for Cape Farewell’s Ice Garden exhibition toured internationally with Art & Climate Change, and is featured in the Burning Ice book.

Kathy’s work spans a background in graffiti, street art and early internet broadcasting. With a range of projects including large-scale video projection onto grain silos in the Australian wheat belt, community projects in South London, hijacked billboards and self-powered, portable neon pieces.

Since 1990, as Wish One, she has carved her own way through a mostly male dominated graffiti scene, painting, exhibiting and collaborating internationally alongside world renown graffiti artists in spaces across Australia, Asia and Europe. She has collaborated with Kangol on her own range of hats, exhibited widely with graffiti collective TheyMadeMeDoIt, led large-scale graffiti productions and painted for music festivals including The Big Chill and Australia’s largest touring music festival the Big Day Out. Her work in graffiti, combined with growing up in one of the most isolated cities in the world, led to an interest in the emerging potential of the internet as a new form of public space. She became involved with collaborative projects experimenting with early internet broadcasts and interactive works, including events with performance artist, Stelarc.

In 2004 she became co-director of independent creative company Bullet, designing websites and more for a wide range of artists and organisations including Siobhan Davies Dance, Jeremy Deller’s Bat House Project and Arts Council England.

She designed Cape Farewell’s first website in 2004, which won a Webby distinction and was an e-Science winner at the UN World Summit Awards. She has since designed several major iterations of the website, alongside a host of microsites and design materials for Cape Farewell exhibitions and events.

Kathy’s blog from the 2008 Disko Bay Expedition
Art & Climate Change exhibition
About Bullet’s work with Cape Farewell