Performance Art (15 Actions for the Face) (excerpt)
2014
Two-channel HD video
Duration 15:35 min
Concept and Performance: Diana Baker Smith, Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore and Kelly Doley
Videography: William Mansfield
Video editing: Kate Blackmore
Sound: Frederick Rodrigues

In Performance Art (15 Actions for the Face), the members of Barbara Cleveland perform a series of instructions read aloud and shown on title cards, such as ‘Say “hello” without moving your face’ and ‘Touch your nose with your tongue’. This work foregrounds play and embodied action in the art making process.

Originally developed for the MCA’s Jackson Bella Room, this work draws together art historical references, conceptual art and educational strategies used in children’s television. For example, the attire Barbara Cleveland wear is inspired by Dadaist Hugo Ball’s costumes, as well as the cardboard and crepe paper costumes made on Play School. Performance Art (15 Actions for the Face) are instructions for an anticipatory audience, one who can, by following the instructions, also become a performance artist.

Credit: Performance Art (15 Actions for the Face) was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia for the 2014 Jackson Bella Room.

The One Hour Laugh (excerpt)
2009
Single-channel HD video
Duration 60:00 minConcept and Performance: Diana Baker Smith, Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore and Kelly Doley
Video editing: Kate Blackmore
Sound: Frederick Rodrigues

In The One Hour Laugh the four members of Barbara Cleveland perform a routine of endurance laughter. Over the course of the hour, their laughter travels between tedium to strain, to genuine hilarity, to humiliation. Barbara Cleveland’s unsettling laughter parodies the austerity of performance art documentation through overt theatricality and seemingly senseless enjoyment.

Bad Timing (excerpt)
2017
Single-channel HD video
Duration 7:28 min
Concept and Performance: Diana Baker Smith, Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore and Kelly Doley
Video editing: Kate Blackmore
Original music: Andrew McLellan

Bad Timing exemplifies Barbara Cleveland’s ongoing investigations into humour and comedy over the past 10 years, such as in their earlier video work The One Hour Laugh (2009) and live performance A Comedy (2010). In Bad Timing the four members of Barbara Cleveland take turns improvising in front of the camera in order to make each other laugh. Bad Timing lies at the intersection of comedy and performance art, which are two forms of performance that rely on different temporal registers. Bad Timing draws out the tensions between the punchline and the endurance of the labouring body. This work foregrounds humour as part of Barbara Cleveland’s collective feminist methodology and seeks to draw attention to the lineage of humour throughout feminist performance practice over the past 40 years.

Work in Progress: Dawn till Dusk (excerpt)
2010
Single-channel HD video
Duration 8:51 min
Concept and Performance: Diana Baker Smith, Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore and Kelly Doley
Video editing: Kate Blackmore
Sound: Frederick Rodrigues

In Work in Progress: Dawn till Dusk, an endurance piece of performative group work, the four members of Barbara Cleveland take turns to hammer a wooden post into the ground with a mallet. Dressed in blue overalls and white t-shirts, the women continue their task silently in a paddock from dawn until dusk. The tacit collaboration of the collective and their shared endurance speaks of women’s work, communality, physicality and persistence. With an underlying humour, Work in Progress: Dawn till Dusk references performance art and its intertwined history with feminist art of the 1960s and 1970s.

This is a stained glass window (excerpt)
2019
Single-channel HD video
Duration: 13:08 min

This is a stained glass window examines the friendship and 15 year working relationship between the four members of Barbara Cleveland. In this work, the collective positions their friendship, their artistic labour and their collaboration as a stained glass window – an accumulated density that exists between them. Through a self-reflexive video portrait, which draws on the aesthetics and conventions of cinéma vérité, conceptual art and performance documentation, This is a stained glass window traces Barbara Cleveland’s unique working model and their overlapping lives. Exposing their working method in a film studio, this video is an intimate portrait of the collective which deliberates on how their specific ‘thinking business’ can offer an alternative support structure for and with each other.

Meeting Time series
2020
Ink on paper, Perspex, wood
84 x 59 cm each

Meeting Time is a text work that draws on the personal archive of Barbara Cleveland to examine artistic labour and collaborative art making practices. The text is taken from 15 years of email exchanges between members of the collective as they try to find a time to meet. Here, the labour involved in simply negotiating a convenient meeting time is on display. The colloquial dialogue between the collective members highlights their long-term practice of working together, as well as the complexities involved in artistic collaboration.

Explore Barbara Cleveland | Thinking Business

A Goulburn Regional Art Gallery and Museums & Galleries of NSW touring exhibition. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Supported by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative.