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Craig Barber

Course Leader, Fine Art

Craig Barber is the Course Leader of Fine Art, who teaches studio content across the three years of the Fine Art course. He graduated with an MA in Painting from Winchester School of Art in 2004 and was previously Senior Lecturer at Coventry University. Barber specializes in painting but also uses a variety of media and methods including sound and performance within collaborative practice.

I have used many methods to make work both collaboratively and individually including sound and performance and yet consistently return to painting as my primary method. Within my current body of work I am making paintings which consider the way that civilisations build physical constructions, and social and political systems which may aim for some form of coherence or unity but are likely to be stricken, fragment or rupture. An equivalent narrative is delivered within the works which, through the pictorial systems they deploy, such as layering and physical gestures, such as cutting and removing areas, seem to exist in a moment of tension between construction and collapse.

I have held group and solo exhibitions and performances at venues in the UK and overseas including MAC, Birmingham; Lanchester gallery, Coventry; H-Project Space, Bangkok; the London Short Film Festival and The Public, West Bromwich and for some years was represented by Francis Kyle Gallery in central London.

Craig’s work is available to view on his website.

Research and Practice

  • 2019: Section 1384 (painting) included in Ambit #235, January 2019
  • 2017: ‘The Habsburgs: Alternative Facts’, 2017, [self published book]  http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/7813898-the-habsburgs-alternative-facts
  • 2017: Outpost Members’ Show, Outpost Gallery, Norwich (selected by Andy Holden)
  • 2017: Human Interfaces, Norwich University of the Arts
  • 2017: Outpost Studio Holders, Outpost Studios, Norwich
  • 2017: Fountain’17, The Habsburgs: alternative facts. [Group exhibition] Hull, London, Stoke, York
  • 2016: Barber, C. Spackman, A. ‘The Habsburgs: Cross-disciplinary sidesteps’ in Message Journaledition 3, Plymouth University, July 2016, available: https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/5117
  • 2016: Outpost Members’ Show, Outpost Gallery, Norwich (selected by Lynda Morris and Chris Rawcliffe)
  • 2015: “Engagement with #3CityLink” ‘International Conference of the Arts in Society’, Imperial College, London
  • 2014-15: (detail).  H-Project Space, Bangkok; Transition Gallery, London; The Usher Gallery, Lincoln
  • 2014:’Pictorial Slippage’. The International Journal of Arts Theory and History 8 (2), 69-78, Common Ground Publishing, ISSN: 2326-9952 (print), 2327-1779 (online)
  • 2014: Peplexia, Through the Wall Projects. Bishop Street Gallery, Coventry
  • 2013: “Pictorial Slippage” presented at the ‘International Conference of the Arts in Society’, Budapest, Hungary
  • 2013: Barber, C., and Spackman, A.- The Habsburgs. Held Feb 2013 at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham
  • 2013: Jumping for Joyce . Francis Kyle Gallery, London
  • 2012: Bruit de Fond – OHMMM. Lanchester Gallery Projects, Coventry
  • 2012: OHMMM London Short Film Festival, The Horse Hospital, London
  • 2011: Unruly Object . Lanchester Gallery Projects, Coventry, UK
  • 2011: Anticurate . Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham
  • 2011: The Art of Noise – OHMMM . The Public, West Bromwich
  • 2011: OHMMM . Intime Symposium, Coventry University
  • 2011: OHMMM . Artsfest, MAC, Birmingham
  • 2011: This twittering world – T S Eliot’s Four Quartets . Francis Kyle Gallery, London, UK
  • 2011: OHMMM . Held Sep 2011 at Anticurate, MAC, Birmingham
  • 2011: OHMMM. UK: Lanchester Gallery, Coventry Airport, and Crewe Music Festival
  • 2010: 400 Women . Held Nov 2010 in Shoreditch Town Hall, London, UK and touring
  • 2009-10: That Gong Tormented Sea . Francis Kyle Gallery, London, UK
  • 2009: ‘Fragmentation’. TRACEY. Available from: www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/sota/tracey/journal/frag/barber.html
  • 2009: Craig Barber. Francis Kyle Gallery, London, UK
  • 2008: Rodina (Motherland) . Francis Kyle Gallery, London, UK
  • 2008: ReCognition . The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry, UK
  • 2007 ING Discerning Eye . Mall Galleries, London, UK
  • 2007 Passage . Wolverhampton, UK
  • 2006 Everyone Sang . Francis Kyle Gallery, London, UK
  • 2006 Craig Barber. Fairfields Arts Centre, Basingstoke, UK
  • 2005 Memory . Clarion Contemporary Art, London, UK
  • 2005 Redundancy . Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK

Committees and Boards

  • 2018-2022 External Examiner for BA (Hons) Painting, Drawing and Printmaking at Plymouth College of Art
  • 2013-present: peer reviewer for The Arts in Society Journal Collection, published by Common Ground Research Networks
  • Member of the Research Committee at Norwich University of the Arts (2020-present)
  • Member of the Quality Standards Committee at Norwich University of the Arts (2015-2017) and the Quality Group (2018-2020).
  • 2018 External panel member for the Art and Design Access Course at Suffolk New College.
  • 2018 Panel Member for the Periodic Review of NUA BA (Hons) Photography and BA (Hons) Film and Moving Image Production.
portrait photo of senior lecturer craig barber standing with arms crossed and looking at camera with short brown hair and a long sleeved vertically striped blue and white shirt
Email Craig Barber