Rosalind Barker Artist

Dzifa Benson Performance Poet

‘EPITAPH’

Installation Sculpture. Graphite drawing on life size cotton sari, oak, wire, gypsum and tissue.

‘THE 100-YEAR JOURNEY’

Inkjet print on clear film, wall mounted with Iron nails.

Artist Rosalind Barker and Performance Poet Dzifa Benson both share an interest in connections between contemporary humanity, the unborn and cultural attitudes to the dead. They sought initial inspiration at their first introductory meeting at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

In 1984 Rosalind had acquired through marriage a box containing half a human skeleton intended as a tool for Medical/Artistic education. It was decided that exploration of both our attitudes to this remnant of a once living personality and consciousness would be the inspiration for the collaborative project.
A research project followed .The box, with its 1953 postage stamps and original labels led to an exchange of information with the initial importers, Adam, Rouilly. Tiny fragments of The Financial Times from the early 1950’s were found as part of the packing material and fuelled further speculation
A medical examination of her bones and teeth established a 100-year time line directly connecting her across time and continents from an India under the rule of the British Raj (1858-1947) to our contemporary 21st century culture.
We became a trilogy of collaborators, one of whom was lost, decaying to invisibility.
In ‘Epitaph’ we summon her presence and essence into our time and city. Giving her a belated beauty and reverence in her death.
‘Journey’ is the visual consolidation of our research process

 Pistols and Pollinators 1

“ ‘Pistols and Pollinators’ offered me the opportunity to engage with a previously unknown creative personality from a different discipline (poetry) and culture. We observed and tried each others working practice while we collectively strived to create and develop a cohesive and mutually satisfying body of work for a final show. Through out the dynamic ‘Pistols and Pollinators’ project, meeting and sharing this growth and development with all the other thirty selected artist/poet protagonists was richly rewarding. Now to learn and move forward in my practice I actively seek out opportunities that will challenge my curiosity, intellect and creativity. Involvement in the first ‘Pistols and Pollinators’ was a fascinating and rewarding experience; the influences of this process continue to reverberate through my practice.” Rosalind Barker 2010