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Artist Interviews

Matthew Barney

American contemporary artist Matthew Barney introduces us to his film 'Redoubt' and the sculptural work 'Bason Creek Burn'.

5 mins

Artist Matthew Barney sitting and introducing his film

Video Transcript

Artist Interviews

Matthew Barney

American contemporary artist Matthew Barney introduces us to his film 'Redoubt' and the sculptural work 'Bason Creek Burn'.

5 mins

Art Talks

Join National Gallery staff as they share works of art that carry value in their lives and inspire new ways of thinking about the world we live in.

Know My Name

View Know My Name Site

An initiative of the National Gallery of Australia, Know My Name celebrates the work of all women artists with an aim to enhance understanding of their contribution to Australia’s cultural life.

This Place: Artists Series

Commissioned by the ABC, this short documentary series features five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from the national collection, looking at their connection to Country and how it inspires their art and identity as they take us to the places across Australia where their art making began. With thanks to Wesfarmers Arts.

Artists In Conversation

MATTHEW BARNEY: I came to filmmaking through, I would say, through the back door, so to speak. I started using a camera to document performances that I was making as a student. And in the years after, I was using video to document real time performance. And so I think as time moved on, I became more interested in storytelling. I tend to start any project with a location and that sense, I would say the place tends to be the central character.

And I would say that's very much true with Redoubt that the central Idaho region and the Sawtooth Mountain Range are the central character. Redoubt is a film without dialog. You could say that the dialog has been replaced with movement. Movement carries the story throughout, through choreography, through the hunt, through the trajectory of the projectile. All forms of movement carry the narrative of Redoubt.

It isn't really about any single thing. I think it's about a number of things and among those, the reintroduction of wolves in the Sawtooth region that happened when I was a teenager growing up in that area, and that is a subject that has always interested me in terms of the politics of that area. So I wanted to approach that specifically and in a site specific way and also to approach it more generally through the lens of a kind of mythological narrative of Diana, of the Hunter, and to what extent she functions as a custodian of the forest she protects.

And it's also a kind of continuation of an exploration of using drawing within a narrative as a as a form of storytelling. One of the sculptures from Redoubt is also on view in the galleries, that is Basin Creek Burn, made from a lodgepole pine that was harvested from one of the burns in the Sawtooth region. For me, this sculpture functions as an aspect of the place.

It was brought back from the location where the narrative was told. I'm interested in finding ways of taking the specific narrative from a very specific place and transforming that into an abstract form. And in that sense, Basin Creek Burn is born out of that narrative and carries it forward. But it also is a distillation out of that narrative and down into a more concentrated abstract form.

I mean, in a way that's really what it's all about for me, I think, is to find narratives that have that kind of potential, like the potential to create sculptural form. And that's really where the project ends with that distillation of abstract form. And Redoubt the film, it's really been made to generate sculpture, that I need a narrative in place to make sculpture.

And so the film in that sense is really a tool toward generating form, abstract form.

National Gallery On Demand

Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney

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Video Transcript

Art Talk with Deborah Hart
Anne Wallace’s 'She is'

Art Talk with Bruce Johnson McLean
Gunybi Ganambarr's 'Lorr'

Art Talk with Rebecca Edwards
Marea Gazzard’s 'Kamares VII'

Art Talk with Peter Johnson
Sarah Lucas' 'TITTIPUSSIDAD'

Art Talk with Anne O'Hehir
Robyn Stacey’s 'Untitled (Girl in blond wig on floor)' and photographs from her series 'Kiss kiss bang bang' (1985).

Art Talk with Elspeth Pitt
Ewa Pachucka’s 'Landscape and bodies'

Art Talk with Keir Winesmith
Freda Robertshaw’s 'Composition'

Art Talk with Adriane Boag
Margel Hinder’s 'Revolving construction'

Art Talk with Nick Mitzevich
Patricia Piccinini's 'Heartwood' and Huma Bhabha's 'Waiting for another game'

Art Talk with Yvette Dal Pozzo
Agatha Gothe-Snape’s 'POWERPOINTS'

Know My Name Conference Keynote Address: Genevieve Grieves
First Nations perspectives on art, gender and feminism

Odd numbers: Artists in the Institution
Know My Name

Nan Goldin & Jennifer Higgie
Artists in Conversation

Griselda Pollock & Sally Smart
Artists in Conversation

Artists in Conversation: Micky Allan
Know My Name