Alice Barker
Degree: BA (Hons) Painting
University: The University of Edinburgh
Graduation Year: 2021
New Blood Art Commentary
Alice Barker is an artist whose work delves into the intricate terrain of memory and nostalgia. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh with a BA (Hons) in Painting in 2021, Barker's practice is deeply personal, serving as a tool for the recollection of her own past. Her paintings evoke a powerful sense of nostalgia and yearning, inspired by the ephemeral nature of memories that often blur the lines between reality and dreams.
Barker's artistic approach is characterised by the use of collage and thin washes of oil paint and turpentine, creating layered, collage-like compositions that embody both calmness and a sense of disorientation. Her work often features a flattened perspective, with figures superimposed on expansive landscapes, creating a connection and disconnection that mirrors the nature of memory itself.
In her exploration of memory, Barker describes the process as wandering through a maze, encountering vistas and dead ends. This is reflected in the transparency of her colours, which emerge and fade away, capturing the fleeting nature of recollection. Her paintings often evoke a sense of vastness and intimacy, an uncanny duality that infuses her work with emotional depth.
Barker's participation in the RSA New Contemporaries 2023 exhibition highlights her as one of the promising talents in Scotland. This exhibition, which showcases the best emerging talent from Scottish art and architecture graduates, provides a platform for Barker's evocative exploration of memory and nostalgia.
Through her work, Barker invites viewers to engage with the duality of dreamlike disorientation and comforting nostalgia, creating a powerful and resonant artistic experience. Her paintings serve as a testament to the complexity of memory, capturing moments that are both vividly present and on the cusp of dissolving.
Artist Statement
My Practice primarily serves as a tool for the recollection of my own past. It is a deeply personal body of work.
My inspiration for this project came when I was sifting through old photo albums during the summer. Upon first looking at these images I was filled with a warm sense of nostalgia and yearning, my mind flooding with stories from the past.
Yet as quickly as these memories came, they also vanished, I found my self straining to try and remember images that had been in my head moments ago. I realised then that I need to make work about this, something that evokes such a powerful response can’t be ignored.
My memories have become layered, I cannot distinguish one from the other, what really happened and what was a dream. The feeling when you you can't remember if something happened, or if you dreamed it into your own reality. That both amazes me and scares me. The more time passes, the more my own memories begin to feel uncertain, shifting into dreams of what might’ve been.
My work aims to communicate the duality of dreamlike disorientation alongside comforting nostalgia. Through my use of collage to create new distorted narratives and thin washes of oil paint and turpentine, I try to create paintings that embody both a sense of calm, but also a sense that things are not quite as they seem. Memories melting away on the canvas surface.
Group Exhibitions
(2023) RSA New Contemporaries, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
(2021) RSA annual exhibition, RSA, Edinburgh
(2020) In the Same Boat, St Margaret’s house, Edinburgh
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2021) RSA New Contemporaries
(2021) Portrait Artist of the Year contestant
(2017) Open Art finalist