Artist: John Barter, Kim Barter, Steven Williams
Title: Hopscotch
Installed: 1999
Materials: Handmade mosaic clay tiles and steel
Location: 186 Baylis Street, Wagga Wagga
These handmade mosaic coloured clay tiles were high-fired, then laid out in the traditional hopscotch layout, inviting the public to play in the street. The handmade solid colour flay tiles represent the landscape – terracotta soils, yellow canola fields, black and white roadways, with the blue circular patterns representing water. Steel plates border this game to frame and signal entry.
Kim Barter
Kim Barter is a painter and printmaker living in Central Victoria, known for her expressive and often visceral responses to the landscape. Barter works en plein air with her sketchbook, often camping for lengths of time to paint, trace, sketch and immerse herself as a true resident of her wild surroundings.
Barter has a Bachelor of Visual Arts with a major in Textiles from the Charles Sturt University where she lectured throughout her early career in Printed Textiles and Drawing. Since the mid 1980's Barter has exhibited throughout Australia including notable exhibitions at Linden Contemporary, Libby Edwards Gallery, Australian Galleries, the Albury Regional Gallery and Stockroom.
Her work has been shortlisted for the Stan and Maureen Duke Gold Coast Prize and the Frankston Art Prize and commissioned by Wagga Wagga City Council, and the the Print Council of Australia, Wagga Wagga City Council. Collections include the Wagga Wagga Regional Gallery, Ararat Art Gallery and Private collections in Australia, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands.
John Barter
John Barter works with weather beaten recycled tin, crumpled and sometimes rusted. He enjoys the relatively small scale of his work, the individuality inherent to each patina and the way his work becomes parts of people’s lives. Barter draws simple shapes onto tin, cuts and shapes by hand, allowing for a rawness in the construction, and an integrity in appearance. His work often reflects a sense of humour.
The Australian vernacular of ‘making-do’ has always been an inspiration for Barter’s work whereby a need is met by ones improvised 3ingenuity. Barter’s work can be found in public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United States of America.
Steven Williams
Steven has completed Post Graduate in Ceramic Design studies. He is a full time teacher of Ceramics at TAFE and is the acting teacher in charge of the Art Department.
Steven has exhibited throughout Australia and still continues to work collaboratively on community projects, while building much experience in wood firing and kiln building. Steven's collaborative Wagga Wagga public artworks are titled Walking Surfaces, Granite Spiral, Sculptural Seat, Bangayarra Walkway, Snakes and Ladders, Bluestone Boarders 1999, Bluestone Boarders 2000 and Hopscotch.