Michele Barker

Michele Barker is a Sydney based artist working in the area of new media. Conceptually, her work has concerned itself with notions of bodily identity, difference and in more recent times, the relationship between science, medicine and corporeality.

Her recent interactive work, an interactive CDROM, Præternatural, explores the historical and contemporary meanings attributed to the monstrous, the mutant and the deformed. Emphasis here is upon the social meanings attributed to and implications of grotesque and the perfect in medicine through eugenics and contemporary gene therapy.

Michele has exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas. Recent shows include Contact Zones at the Nickle Art Museum, University of Calgary, Canada. Waste 2001, Blackbox Media Lounge, Victorian Arts Centre. :::contagion::: Australian media art @ the Centenary of Federation, New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington. d>art 01, Customs House City Exhibition Space, Sydney. Tech Flesh: The Promise and Perils of the Human Genome Project, on-line. As part of Ctheory Multimedia

She was invited by the Australian Film Commission to take Præternatural to Milia 200the major international interactive conference and exhibition Cannes, France, as well as being a Keynote Speaker at FutureBodies: The Body I Will Have Been, a conference convened by the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany.

In April she will be exhibiting in a group show, Aller Anfang (The Very Beginning), at the Palais Schoenborn, Vienna.

Michele lectures in Digital Media in the Department of Photomedia, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.