Trap 1989. 770x580mm. Graphite on Arche hot pressed cotton rag
Shadwell Quadrent II 1991 180x160 Acrylic on layered boards of marouflaged canvas painted hardwood rods..
Private collection 1991
'Rushby Fury IV' from the 'Alecto' sequence from the intervention 'Aqua six margins of Lethe - Matters of time'. Size A4 on 310gm Arche 88 Matt cotton rag paper. November 2025.
About
Malcolm Barrett
My work frequently concerns intervention into specific spaces. The intervention relates to a space, in terms of its past and/or the encounters with experiences found in the walking through the spaces or surrounding spaces. Sometimes visual references are made to works by others (eg Bosch’s ‘Garden of Worldly Delights’ in the film-work Fugium 1 and Aqua).
Being trained as a painter there is a strong association with drawing, and early interventions or works for specific spaces are reflected in the development of work that challenged the traditional form of painting where canvasses were always rectangular and flat. The challenge for me, then lead to using layered and discontinuous or multiple serial shapes, especially where they drew on an early interest in medieval painting (eg triptychs) as well as serial forms both by using canvass, mixing oil and acrylic paint, mixed media and other works on paper.
By 1989 works had already embraced different mediums derived from the space the work was to be introduced into (eg painted layers on ply wood, the introduction of gold leaf which was then obliterated (eg ‘Station (Fall 1’)), or the use of found plastic forms and the use of melted tin). Soon after that date, digital film was also being explored for its very transient qualities and sense of change (eg ‘Pilgrim’ that uses a S/N 14 mile line from the City of London to Waltham Abbey and back along the River Lea, a shorter N/S 12mile line using digital images of a randomly chosen form in one direction that is then searched for at every mile but with total freedom on the return).
Since 2004 a number of film-works have been ‘presented ‘ within forms such as boxes, cabinets, drawers, frames, table tops, cases etc. These forms reflect the nature of the space and are derived from or even use common domestic form. They challenge the notion of film as passive remote entertainment, even to having found objects presented alongside the filmwork (eg earth) that have been discovered on specific walks. For example ‘Isabella’s Progress’ is a 14 mile W/E walked line that was an apparently relatively private journey or Royal progress and so films and works relate to the original journey through the closed ‘draws’. The draws also contain bookworks or prints that have been worked over in gouache, graphite, chalk etc. and objects picked up en route. Other works may relate to time as a space or reflect an internal space and its uses. Importantly film allows for large spaces and a multiplicity of viewpoints to define the space and its changes, and the work although can be seen remotely is nevertheless optimised for local engagement (eg Three Gardens was viewed inside a church at a time when the so called subject would be uppermost in the viewers mind).
This trailer for “Aqua - Six margins of Lethe’ represents a 20 min ‘short’ using a Fibonacci Sequence for its structure and concerned with a ‘shaped’ walk along the river Pix. The Pix is a natural source for Chalk filtered water making it a rare earth bound commodity.. It however also serves a ‘utopian’ community that would not have developed without this quality of water. Yet the walk discovered its source as a dried up spring full of fly tipped waste and the course of the river filled in. Then with any residual water, being seen as probable highway run-off and thus polluted. This led in turn to a reading of the Pix as one of the waters of Lethe, (the river in Hades that is dedicated to forgetting) which in turn offered the light of Hemera dropping into darkness and sleep (Hypnos) before entering death (Thanatos). The lower visible and open sections of water became Alecto due to the urban noise and water management constrictions finally ending with Portal where the river leaves the community yet a place where fences now turn their back on the nature reserve. This is also the place where one hears the dog guarding - what? but echoes Cerebus and old hollow oak trees have teeth and eyes inviting one into a fantasy world just like one finds in Breugal’s drawings (eg the vice of Luxuria and excess).While at the same time figures wrapped in their own time pass through without seeing, as one finds in Bosch’s ‘Garden of Worldly delights” .
One can see this film-work along with Field 15 at the Broadway Gallery Letchworth Garden City as part of the intervention Aqua - City of Dreams - Matters of Time.( https://www.broadway-gallery.com ) from24th April to 30 May 2026.
