Description:Q6353

In 2010 I attended a Museum at Night event at the Government Art Collection just off Tottenham Court Road. At the end of the evening they sent us home with a catalogue in which the introduction included the caveat that they couldn’t use photos of some artists’ work because they had lost contact with their estates meaning they couldn’t seek permission and would be infringing copyright. I was interested in the idea of these lost connections and proposed a residency to the collection in which I would investigate the concept of missing artists, leading towards the development of a new artwork.

I started narrowing down my search and settled upon Barbara A Brine, active in the 1970s and therefore potentially still alive. The curators were interested but prevaricated and finally confessed there was concern that as an organisation associated with the government they had to be seen to be utterly trustworthy and reliable, my notion of the ‘lost artist’ might be misconstrued. One curator even evoked the fear of a tabloid doorstepping them on Christmas day with accusations of carelessness. Undeterred, and with the spur of my proposal being long listed for an Artangel call out, I undertook some internet research and spoke to potential family members - I also began to consider the ethics of searching for someone who might not want to be found.

Whilst this rumbled on Floating World Books, a collective to which I’m an occasional contributor, were invited to develop new work in response to the National Irish Visual Arts Library archive and the F.E. McWilliam Gallery and Studio in Bannbridge Co. Down. and so I travelled to Dublin to continue my research there. I was still nominally searching for Barbara but slowly realised that if I did find a Barbara then she wasn’t mine. My Barbara is the one that’s always missing.

In the archive I discovered they employ collectors across the country who are paid to gather materials that evidence artists - catalogues, show invites, the usual ephemera. Without a significant amount of these the artist stays in a miscellaneous folder rather than gaining their own. I devised a pamphlet in which the Barbara Collector advises on how to achieve more visibility and attract the attention of future researchers.

Each pamphlet has a sticker with a hand written letter B on, referencing the classification system devised by Wendy Davis for the Feminist Library collection.

The pamphlet is accompanied by a video, documenting the process of the search, and a rolodex that allows people to add the names of their own missing artists. The latter was inspired by discovering a rolodex in the the Rotherhithe Picture Research Library whilst having a breather during a 40th birthday party - the rolodex belonged to the librarian and had a sticker saying ‘Property of Barbara’.

I continue to look for Barbara through other artworks, including I’m Not Looking for Mrs Barbara, a map of Tate Britain highlighting the paucity of women artists on display and the emphasis on their marital status in Wikipedia.