Glenn Barkley: Earthly Delights

Off the back of his exhibition at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, Plant Your Feet, Glenn Barkley and Elsiena ten Kate sit down to discuss the year ahead.

A conversation between Glenn Barkley and Elsiena ten Kate

Elsiena ten Kate / How are you Glenn? How's your week been?

Glenn Barkley / It’s good. I seem to be eating too much and sleeping a lot. I’ve been watching the whole of The Godfather series, which has been amazing. They're the best films ever made. One and two are amazing. Three is pretty bad.

EtK / You’ve just moved into a new studio. Can you tell me a bit more about it?

GB / Yes, in Annandale. Is this part of the interview? Are you interviewing me now?

Glenn Barkley wheniwasinmynativeplace vase, 2022 earthernware 21 x 12 x 9.5 cm

Photo: Aaron Anderson

EtK / [laughs] Yes, I'm interviewing you now.

GB / It's this funny thing… I feel like I manifested the studio. I had an idea. I had a vision of what the studio would be. I dreamt there'd be a place on Parramatta Road near my house that I could walk to. And then that place just turned up. It's just perfect.

EtK / How do you see the new space shaping and changing your work?

GB / I haven't had a studio in Sydney for a year, and it's just such a beautiful, big space. It's going to have a much bigger kiln, which just means you've got more control over what you make. It's the most empowering thing you can do–to have such proximity to the kiln means that you can work with bigger objects. I can see my work increasing in scale. And Toni Warburton, who's a great ceramicist, once said to me, "Always control the means of production." It's really liberating.

EtK / It’s a busy year for you. Can you give a rundown of some of your forthcoming projects?

GB / I’m curating a big show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which is going to include a large piece called The Wonder Room, which was part of an exhibition I did in Shoalhaven. It’s a big terracotta house made up of hundreds of ceramic tiles made by a diverse group of people from the area. The tiles are people's responses to what reminds them of home or what they love about Shoalhaven. They're quite heartfelt. It's been a great project to be involved with.

I’m also involved in the Berry Courthouse project for OpenField. This work involves installing about a 1000 or so small trees, like a formal garden. I'm working with local artists to make trees as well, so it's not just my work. It's a big collaborative piece.

It's this funny thing… I feel like I manifested the studio. I had an idea. I had a vision of what the studio would be.

EtK / What draws you to working collaboratively?

GB / I like working with people, and I like working with people who exist outside the capital C, capital A Contemporary Art world. I find them interesting. I like talking to people. It's good to simply have a chat and a laugh. Ceramics is an interesting art form that really grounds people. It's meditative. It feels nice. You can do things almost instantly. It's not like photography or computer-generated art or even painting where you have to go through all these hoops. You get clay and start making stuff.

Glenn Barkley flouro double gourd pot, 2022 earthernware 18.5 x 10 x 7 cm

Photo: Aaron Anderson

EtK / Can you tell me more about the AGNSW show?

GB / It’s an exhibition called brick vase clay cup jug It looks at the ceramics in their collection, as well as paintings, prints, photography and other objects. I used those words–brick, vase, clay, cug, jug–as basic search terms in their database, because it picked up a lot of different items, not just ceramics. I've been lucky to have a career as a curator and a valuer where I've managed to spend time in art gallery storerooms. I love the logic of the storeroom–it’s an illogical way of putting things together. It's quite often based on the practicalities of storage, but results in these weird juxtapositions where you think, "Oh, that's amazing. Those two things would never go together. A curator would never be game enough to do that, but someone's done it here just because they need to fit things." And I want the show to have an element of that. It's a bit jarring: operating in a space between the gallery and storage.

EtK / You have a new book coming out: Ceramics and Atlas of Forms. Can you tell us about this project?

GB / It tells a global history of ceramics using about 110 objects from Australian and New Zealand collections. It begins with the first pots, an ancient pre-dynastic Egyptian pot, and winds its way through history, finishing with a work that is actually unfinished by Dean Cross. It starts with something fixed and ends with something that’s expansive.

EtK / You’ve also got your exhibition with Sullivan+Strumpf Naarm/Melbourne in June. What are you most looking forward to regarding the show?

GB / I'm really looking forward to getting in the studio and making the work. I’m thinking about the space [in Melbourne], about what it is to present, because you need to start to put things together conceptually. I'm looking forward to experimenting with new things and to show those new pieces in a new space. It means that you can take a bit of risk with new work and put forward new ideas. I think that's important. The new gallery in Melbourne is such a beautiful space too – it’s nice to have that formal space to bounce around in but be informal with the work itself.

EtK / Can you give a little snippet of what people can expect in Melbourne?

Glenn Barkley wokewowsers bottle, 2022 earthernware 20 x 7.5 x 6 cm

GB / The best ceramics you’ve ever seen.

EtK / [laughs] That can be the tagline! You’ve got a massive year ahead. You’ll need to take yourself off to Tahiti or something after this.

GB / It's going to be so good. Actually, I might go somewhere.

EtK / Where would you go?

GB / I'd probably go somewhere just to look at old pots. That's the funny thing.