Gallery 3
Barton Price - Thin Places
19 - 30 August 2026
please note last day of exhibition ends on 30 August at 3pm
Opening night
21 August | 6 - 8 pm
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Sunday: 10 am – 5 pm
ARTIST STATEMENT
Barton Price is a mixed media artist whose practice explores the relationship between visual culture and music. His work transforms the hidden language of music notation—the symbols and markings traditionally used by composers and musicians—into a visual experience for the viewer. Through painting, notation becomes a source of form, gesture, texture and composition rather than simply a set of instructions for performance.
In Thin Places, paintings emerge from original compositions, significant musical works and fragments of personal musical memory. Price reinterprets musical references through a visual language of colour, material, abstraction and layered imagery, creating works that explore place, memory, loss, identity and human connection.
In some works, the relationship between music and image is direct. Barbados references the hit song of the same name by The Models, a band of which Price was a member. Created in response to the death of the band’s saxophone player James Valentine, the work draws on motifs from Valentine’s saxophone solo, transforming personal loss into a visual reflection on friendship, shared history and the enduring connections created through music.
In other works, the connection is more subtle. Lacrimosa 1 references Mozart’s Requiem Mass, with musical elements largely obscured within the painting. Created following the death of a close family member, the work explores grief, remembrance and the healing process of reconnecting with positive memories and experiences.
All works in Thin Places are created on found and inherited canvases. The existing material history of each surface becomes part of the artwork; sometimes only the texture remains, while at other times previous imagery is retained and transformed into a new visual context.
Through these works, Price explores how images, materials and musical memories can carry experiences across time. Thin Places occupies a space between the audible and the visible, where sound becomes colour, notation becomes form, and personal histories become shared visual experiences.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Barton Price creates artwork at the intersection of visual culture and music. His practice often takes the form of performance installations, where audiences and performers experience musical notation as visual art. In Thin Places, paintings emerge from original compositions, significant musical works that have shaped his life and fragments of personal musical memory. Through transformed notation, obscured scores and visual remnants of sound, Price explores how music carries experiences of place, loss, identity and shared human connection.
Created on found and inherited canvases, Price’s works retain traces of previous lives, adding another layer of memory and transformation to the relationship between image, material and sound. Influences and references range from Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet and Mozart’s Requiem to David Bowie, Gabriella Smith, Bobbie Gentry, his own compositions, and a lifetime of musical collaborations including The Models and Steve Kilbey of The Church.
BARTON PRICE
Selected Artistic Projects
Thin Places — Solo Exhibition, Red Gallery, 2026
Mixed media works exploring the relationship between visual culture, music, notation and memory.
Master of Music (Composition) — Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 2026
Pending award.
The Speed of the Stars — Album release, 2025
Recorded in Italy and released September 2025. Featuring collaborations with Hugo Race (The Wreckery / The Black Seeds) and Steve Kilbey (The Church).
Melbourne 1982 — Group Exhibition, Ladderspace, Melbourne, 2025
Modern Times v01 — Mixed Media Installation / Performance, Disorder Gallery, 2023
Hubris — Mixed Media Installation / Performance, Goodspace Gallery, Sydney, 2022
Previously scheduled for Vivid Festival 2021 (cancelled due to COVID).
Three street art works — Palmy Poster Project, 2021
By The Dry Cardrona — Composition premiered by the New Zealand String Quartet, 2021
Impression Collision — Finalist, Bruno Maderna Chamber Composition Competition, 2016
Performed in Lviv, Ukraine.
Revolving Around a Fixed Central Point (Fibonacci), Beginning at One — Bus Gallery, Melbourne, 2003
Collaborative installation with George Papadimas. Music composed by Barton Price.
Music Career & Collaborations
Tour 2026: Celebrating Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground
Featuring Dave Graney, Robert Forster, Mick Harvey and Rob Snarski.
Steve Kilbey (The Church)
Ongoing collaborations including solo album recordings (2016, 2020, 2021), live performances, and Festival of Sydney at Sydney Recital Hall (2019).
The Church
American Tour, 2022.
The Models
Member of ARIA Hall of Fame inducted band The Models.
National and international touring and recordings.
David Bowie
Supported David Bowie on Australian and New Zealand tour, 1983.
Rocking the Royals — 1985
Performed for Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Additional recordings and performances with Divinyls, Dragon, Joan Jett and others.