Irene Barberis facts for kids

Irene Barberis is a talented artist from Australia and Britain. She lives and works in both Melbourne, Australia, and London, England. Irene is mostly known for her paintings, but she also creates amazing art using installations (art that fills a space), drawings, and new media (like digital art). She is also the person who started an international art research center, and she helps organize art shows around the world. She also writes about art.

Irene's Journey in Art

Irene Barberis was born in Chiswick, London, in 1953. She grew up in the countryside of Victoria, Australia. When she was young, she loved classical ballet and started dancing at age three. She stopped dancing at nineteen after an injury.

In 1973, Irene began traveling with Australian artist Robert Hunter. They went to New York for his art show at the Museum of Modern Art, and then explored Europe. When she was 22, Irene returned to Australia and finished her art degree at the Preston Institute. She then continued her studies at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Melbourne.

In 1979, Irene won a special award called the Keith and Elizabeth Murdoch Fellowship. This allowed her to travel to Paris, France, where she lived, worked, and showed her art from 1980 to 1982. She married sculptor Adrian L. Page in 1984, and they had a daughter named Rebekah in 1988.

Irene continued her art education, earning a Master of Fine Art in 1994 and a PhD in 2000. She teaches painting at RMIT University in Melbourne and also in Hong Kong. She is also the founder of the Global Centre for Drawing and Metasenta Publications.

Irene's Artworks

Irene Barberis has been creating art since the mid-1970s. She often uses ideas from the Bible in her artwork. She has shown her art in many countries since the 1980s.

One of her notable exhibitions was "Intersections: Reading the Space" in 2005. This show was first seen at the Jewish Museum of Australia and later at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco. She has also had exhibitions like "Trancentric" in London (2008) and "The Agency of Words" in London and Manchester (2009).

Her major project, 'The Tapestry of Light', is a huge artwork that combines art and science. It was created with help from scholars and scientists.

The LeWitt Project

Irene Barberis met famous artist Sol LeWitt in New York in 1974, and they became good friends. After he passed away in 2007, Irene remained close with his family. She was the first artist, besides Sol LeWitt's daughter, to work in his studio in Chester. She spent many months there, studying his art methods and creating her own works.

In 2019, Irene started "The LeWitt Project." This is a long-term research and exhibition program that explores Sol LeWitt's influence and ideas across ten different countries. The project began in the UK in 2023, followed by Melbourne, Australia, and Hong Kong in 2024.

In 2022, Irene published a beautiful book about Sol LeWitt's Chester studio. The book shows many photos of his studio, just as he left it.

The Tapestry of Light

Irene Barberis's project, "The Tapestry of Light: A 21st Century Apocalypse; Intersections of Illumination," has been a research project for over 20 years. It explores the idea of "light" in a modern way, looking at old ideas about the "Last Days."

This project is inspired by a famous 14th-century artwork called the 'Angers Tapestry'. Irene's research combines art design, science (especially how we see light and color), and medieval culture. The artwork asks if new ideas from science and modern thought can help us understand old stories in a new way.

The Tapestry of Light artwork is very large, measuring 3.2 meters tall and 36 meters long. It is made from traditional threads and uses special nano-particle science developed by Professor David E. Mainwaring. This makes it a "light-forming" tapestry, meaning the images change as the light around it changes. It was woven on a special loom by Flanders Tapestry.

The artwork has fourteen panels of different sizes. Above the images, the entire text of the Book of Revelation appears to float three meters above the floor when the artwork is shown in a dark room. Some of the large panels feature Irene's early paintings and drawings. Other panels include 64 smaller images from the Angers Tapestry, redrawn for the 21st century. This makes it the first complete "Apocalypse" cycle created by a female artist in over 500 years.

The Tapestry of Light helps people in the 21st century understand old stories in a new way, combining art, science, and history. It has been shown in important places like St Michael and St Gudula Cathedrals in Brussels (2017), Canterbury Cathedral in the UK, and the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC (2019-2020).

Metasenta

Irene Barberis is the founder and director of "Metasenta." This is an international center for art research, supported by universities like RMIT University in Melbourne and the University of the Arts, London. Through Metasenta, Irene has started many international art projects, exhibitions, publications, and films.

She also created The DrawingSpace, a mobile art gallery in Melbourne. Metasenta is known for publishing books, such as "Contemporary Australian Drawing #1," which surveyed Australian drawing.

Irene has also organized large international art shows. For example, in 2009, she curated "Across the Gulf: Bahrain Dubai and Abu Dhabi: 22 Artists." She has also focused on major drawing exhibitions, including "Contemporary Australian Drawing #1" (2010) and "Contemporary Australian Drawing #2" (2012). She led conferences like "Crossing the Line: Drawing in the Middle East" in Dubai, which brought together artists to discuss drawing.