Gavin Barbey

Interdisciplinary artist Gav Barbey freezes colours (pigment/paint) into blocks of ice. Colours frozen in water. Multiple colours lay static, frozen in time. Ice melts and colour flows to reveal an inner world, forming patterns, rivers, expressions, to eventually evaporate, dry and stain the canvas, a process of transformation within water’s hydrologic cycles.

“It does not concern my initial idea. If the material, the frozen forms are temporal, it is what they express at any given moment within their journey… my journey…the audiences journey which matters.

Transmogrification…Grace… the figurative abstraction of a story that reveals itself to both artist and viewer; like the dance of a fire, the course of a river, the roots and branches of a tree, the meanderings of the mind, the meditation of the spirit, the playfulness of the physical; these works hope to celebrate rather then dictate what we see and feel within any given moment and the story we are influenced to put upon them within that moment.”

Over the 2024 Australia Day weekend Gav Barbey created a series of performance and physical art pieces in Sorrento and in gallery 1 at & Gallery Australia…

Full Catalogue Here

Ice Melt Street Activation

On Friday 26 January 2024 Interdisciplinary artist Gav Barbey froze colours (natural pigment and natural elements) into 130 lt blocks of ice that were positioned around the Sorrento village to slowly melt over Australia day.

The colours/flowers were frozen in water to create multiple colours that lay static, frozen in time.

Ice melted and colour flowed to reveal an inner world, forming patterns, rivers, expressions which eventually evaporated and dried, a process of transformation within the water’s hydrologic cycles.