I am a Shoalhaven High School graduate, class of 1990 growing up in Vincentia. I chose Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga campus to begin a 30-year learning journey encompassing a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts), partial Bachelor of Arts (Multimedia), then training and practice as an art history, painting and drawing teacher at the Riverina Institute of TAFE. During my years in Wiradjuri country, I also worked as a life model, tattooist, mural artist (including the Wiradjuri cultural centre), illustrator for the Murrumbidgee Water Catchment Management Authority and Aboriginal storyteller Pauline McLeod (1960-2003), and army photographer at Kapooka. I also worked for twelve years as an external marker for CSU and raised two children with artist and curator Adam Bell participating in art and music projects he developed as part of the Space Program, an artist run initiative that birthed the now international Unsound festival. During this period in the Riverina, I exhibited in ten group exhibitions, three solo shows, and won a pastel drawing prize.
Moving to Canberra enabled me to achieve First Class Honours and a PhD at ANU in the painting workshop under Ruth Waller. A research scholarship funded travel to Gunbalanya, Western Arnhem Land, NT to study rock art and bark painting with the Badari family, Kunwinjku traditional owners of sacred ochre sites, linguist Murray Garde and archaeologist/anthropologist Sally May. I produced a dissertation about sacred ochres and the representation of animals in rock and bark painting and developed the shroud process producing a body of work with accompanying exegesis. I was guided by theory supervisor Nigel Lendon (1944-2021) and painting supervisor Vivienne Binns OAM (b.1940). During this period in Canberra I participated in nine group exhibitions alongside participation in art prize events in various Australian cities including Canberra. I also presented at sixteen conferences and symposiums in various cities throughout my candidature.
Returning to Vincentia I worked as resident artist at Bay and Basin Community Resources and received funding for a major public art project for the Bherwerre wetlands. I joined Jervis Bay and Basin Arts Inc. participating in seventeen group exhibitions in the Shoalhaven. Leading up to his death in 2015, I collaborated with my father Tibor Barbay, a local taxidermist, amateur naturalist, and funnel web spider specialist. We had several joint exhibitions and a posthumous retrospective of his work at Bundanon. His taxidermy also featured when I performed in ‘Night vision’ during Siteworks 2016. I have been artist in residence at Bundanon, Worrowing and Hill End. I have been a finalist in twenty three art prizes during my visual art career, including three highly commended awards and four winner awards. I have featured in ten publications and several media articles. Since completing a Master of Teaching – Secondary at UOW in 2020, I have been teaching full time at Vincentia High School.
