Juliana BARTULIN, Barcelona devotional 2003

My work usually results from a direct and labour-intensive process. Meditative process and tracing the time of creating the work are integral to an idea of direct experience, of being present, in the making and viewing scenarios. It could be termed ‘Slow Art’, in feeling the fullness of time in making, perhaps the work in turn slows down the viewer’s ‘normal’ experience of intersubjective time. To give oneself time seems gently subversive in a world that is continuing to speed up.

Barcelona devotional was made in Barcelona during an Australia Council for the Arts residency. My research there included investigations into the use of pattern and repetition in both religious and secular works in light of an historical notion of mosaic work as a practice of paying tribute to the Muses (Protectors of the Arts) through a kind of devotional toil. This piece took the grid (mesh) as a starting point, which I saw as a metaphor for Barcelona as a prototypical urban centre. When folded, the grid becomes elliptical and suggests other less concrete connections, patterns and possibilities. During my residency I was intrigued by the proliferation of images of vegetal regeneration in public spaces, and echoes of these motifs emerged as the work took form.

Photography: Brenton McGeachie