Of Polish heritage, Melbourne-based artist Chris Barry has been exploring ideas of place and belonging for more than a decade. Her photographic installation Out of Place focused on Alice Springs, Central Australia and explored issues relating to history and geography, and the complex relationships of nature/culture, colonial/post-colonial, and indigenous Australian/white European binaries.

Presented as three suites of work, Barry’s interrogation of these themes is revealed through black and white photographs capturing the disorientating space of the desert, colour images of the aboriginal community in Alice Springs, and photographic works of recycled bras, hand dyed and stretched across the picture plane to form a horizontal strata that mimics the sedimentary layering of landscape.

Chris Barry was a recipient of the 1993 prestigious Alice Prize (a nationally acclaimed Australian Art Prize for artists in any media). Since then Barry has been returning to Alice Springs to work with aboriginal communities in the region.

This exhibition was staged concurrently with John Reynolds: HEVN not to scale and MATERIALISE.