1001 Nights Cast

About the Artist

Barbara Campbell has performed in both hemispheres, in museums, galleries, public buildings, photographs, on film, video, radio, and the internet, in silence and with words, still and moving, since 1982. She has had a long fascination with the visual and adaptive qualities of text and in works such 1001 nights cast and the News Haiku series, has been exploring the idea of the empirical now in newspaper stories.

After completing undergraduate degrees in fine arts and art history, Barbara Campbell was awarded a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney in 1998. She has undertaken residencies at Griffith University, Queensland, The University of Melbourne, The University of Sydney, Australia Council studios in Santa Monica and New York, the Power Institute studio, Paris and Bundanon Trust (the Arthur Boyd estate), NSW. In 1994 the NSW Ministry for the Arts awarded her the Women and Arts Fellowship and in 2004 she received an Australia Council Fellowship to produce 1001 nights cast.

Campbell has held workshops in drawing, writing and performance in the USA, UK, Hong Kong and Australia. Her recent teaching work includes courses in experimental drawing at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney and in media art projects at the University of Wollongong. In 2002 the Department of Performance Studies at Sydney University produced a survey exhibition of her 1996-2001 performances with an accompanying catalogue, Flesh Winnow (Power Publications: 2002) and she is now an Associate Artist with the Department.

Artefacts and objects created in and around Campbell’s performances are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia; Griffith University; Queensland University; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the State Library of Queensland and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.