Encountering Culture: A Dialogue
Out of Place
Atonement
Lost in Translation
Displaced Objects
Wind in Utopia
Habitat: A Question of Place
Lost in Translation (1988 & 1992/1996)
The word ‘translation’, Salman Rushdie tells us, ‘comes, etymologically, from the Latin for ‘bearing across’. Having been borne across the world, we are translated… It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, he says, to the notion that something can also be gained’. What is gained, according to Rushdie, is a ‘stereoscopic vision’ whereby the immigrant or exile lives in the dichotomous state of insider/outsider simultaneously. S/he is able to offer a ‘double perspective’ (Rushdie: 1992:17-19).
Lost in Translation is a series of 15 photographic works originally produced in 1988 as Cibachrome photographic prints or direct positive colour photographs (50.0cm x 50.0cm) entitled Displaced Objects 2. In 1992 these same works were enlarged and reprinted as Type C photographic prints (127.0cm x 127.0cm/152.0cm x 127.0cm) and renamed, Lost in Translation. A suite of selected works were exhibited at the Mala Galeria, Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; and part of an international symposium, Pop Culture and Australian Identity, staged by The Australian Studies Centre, University College London (Director: Richard Nile). In 1996, selected works were featured in a survey exhibition, Wind in Utopia, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, Curator: Jenepher Duncan.
Image left:
Chris Barry
Occidental Tourist
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Publications
The Translative Space of Art (Chris Barry)
Lost in Translation: Photo-installations by Chris Barry
(Freda Freiberg)Links
Griffith University Art Collection (Puppet)
Griffith University Art Collection (Nocturne)
Image above:
Chris Barry
Train to Hollywood
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/152.0cm x 127.0cm
Collection: Art Gallery of Western Australia
In 1987 I started photographing members of my immediate family in Poland. This was a means of trying to decipher my entry into another cultural schema—one that sat in stark contrast to my western, individuated, and economically secure world-view. Poland at the time was under the rule of a Communist regime responsible for decades of oppression, fear, and hardship. As a nation and state, this was a place of constant surveillance, informants, suspicion, paranoia, secured borders, political incarceration, religious suppression—a dehumanising of social values and behaviour, and the contamination of what is considered a free, normal life. Residents queued for basic necessities; there were food shortages and empty shelves, workplaces were inefficient and health care was inadequate and antiquated, as was industry. The economy was ineffective and a life of bribes rife. Yet it was not possible for most to leave. Hence, survival required perseverance and ingenuity. Therefore, to step into this environment and live amongst an extended familial network not only challenged my world-view, but initiated what Gayatri Spivak (1988) called ‘subjective loss’—an inability to comprehend because of my comparative privilege. The camera, then, became the mediating device between two contrasting and colliding world-views.
Image above:
Chris Barry
Ode to Rodchenko and the Polish Flag
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Image above:
Chris Barry
Franek
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Image above:
Chris Barry
Nocturne
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Collection: Monash University of Modern Art
& Griffith University Art Collection
Image above:
Chris Barry
Ode to Diane Arbus and the New Order
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Collection: University of Tasmania
Image above:
Chris Barry
Hanka
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Image above:
Chris Barry
Nocturne 2
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/152.0cm x 127.0cm
Image above:
Chris Barry
Puppet
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Collection: Griffith University Art Collection
& Horsham Regional Art Gallery
Chris Barry
Graveyard
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/152.0cm x 127.0cm
Image above:
Chris Barry
Celka
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Collection: Monash Gallery of Art
Image above:
Chris Barry
Dancing, Dancing, Dancing
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/152.0cm x 127.0cm
Image above:
Chris Barry
Greetings from Rosocha
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
Image above:
Chris Barry
Man of Iron
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/152.0cm x 127.0cm
Image above:
Chris Barry
Nocturne 3
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/152.0cm x 127.0cm
Image above:
Chris Barry
Occidental Tourist
Lost in Translation 1988 & 1992/96
Direct positive colour photograph/
Type C photographic print
50.0cm x 50.0cm/127.0cm x 127.0cm
