About

Currently operating as practice-based researcher with no public facing works except those being produced in collaboration. Research focus: Evoking the neuro-divergent experience of temporality. Research gets me high.

Practice

Mike Barrett is an artist and a data scientist.

He is an artist driven by a joy of making and sharing discoveries, large and small, made through tinkering with processes and materials, day-dreaming about what the world might be. Arguably his practice is an enquiry with the outputs being artefacts and tools of enquiry but not the sole objective of it.

There is a fluidity to his work that comes from intention revealing itself through process. He captures objects and images at the point of transition. Asemic scripts all but express what conventional languages fail to convey. Chance seeps in, even what looks like machine-generated binary code, on close inspection reveals wobbly hand-made features.

The quieter works have auratic aspects that connect you with a sense of a spiritual presence and in others, where storms break the silence, a struggle can clearly be seen and felt. He appears torn between summoning still quiet spaces for the resting of embattled lives and freely channeling the raw experiences of those lives. There are questions he asks us to consider - what is it to be mortal? How do we rest within the fragility of our lives? Making art gets me high.

Practice Videos

A short video following the journey from process to object and finally image manipulation. A search for what wants to emerge.

Shows

NO gallery Research Space shows from January 2022: ‘History not being what it used to be’, ‘Gormless’

2023 in progress: ‘Quantum St Anthony’

‘The Combination of [11C]Phlogiston and Ornithological Surgery in the Management of Intracranial Terra Lapidea, Terra Fluida and Terra Pinguis’, an artwork created in a collaboration between Tony Gee and Mike Barrett, has been acquired by the Journal of Neurosurgery Imaging and Techniques (ISSN: 2473-1943) for their permanent collection.

It is currently on display at this location:

https://www.scitcentral.com/documents/9ac03203658492fa7d39437910218005.pdf

Residencies

Kings Collage London: Radiation is everywhere: a collaborative photography project working with scientists from KCL, UCL & Southampton University. September 2020 - images to go live online in January with a follow-on gallery show to follow.

Kings College London: Creative workshops with the scientists of KCL/St Thomas Radiochemistry Imaging Research team led by Prof Tony Gee. November 19th 2019 - continues

EWAAC Kyoto 2019: community activities and show

Army Core Medical Museum 2016: 3D imaged and printed responses to museum artefacts

Curatorial Projects

Le Salon Altenatif Brighton University 2019: Group Show 2019

Contemporary Narratives, Craft Study Centre UCA Farnham: Creative Response (core cast glass sculpture) to Tang Dynasty grave artefact and Essay 2017

Materiality and Process: Linear Gallery UCA Farnham 2016

Teaching

Kings College London: Visiting Teaching Fellow on Critical Thinking Module of Msc/Mres Healthcare Technologies. September 2020 - December 2020