Michele Barker / National Regional Arts Fellow '26

Callala Beach, New South Wales
Artform: Visual Arts
Project Title: Poles Apart: A creative exploration of how a melting Arctic affects regional communities in NSW

Creative & Professional Development Fellowship

The Arctic is warming six times faster than the global average yet change appears remote and invisible and the science indecipherable. This Fellowship will enable 12 months of creative practice exploring the connections between a melting Arctic and Michele’s own region – the South Coast of NSW – through fieldwork, studio experimentation, and community engagement.

Michele Barker is an award-winning artist and researcher known for immersive experimental moving image and acoustic environments. Her practice explores the complexities of human and more-than-human experience through perception, embodiment, movement and duration. Barker received a prestigious A.I.R. at Eyebeam, New York, where she developed the prize-winning multi-channel work 'Struck',  later presented in a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Other significant works include 'évasion' an eight-channel responsive installation exploring human and cinematic movement, and 'HokusPokus' a multi-channel interactive work examining perception, magic and early moving image technologies. Her ocean-focused work 'pull' was commissioned for 'Experimenta Make Sense' and toured nationally. Her ongoing project 'ecologies of duration' uses aerial and underwater drones to examine anthropocentric impacts on Earth, making geological time visible. Recent iterations include 'ecologies (Arctic)', addressing glacial melt in the Arctic, presented at ISEA24/QUT Art Museum and the Burrinja Climate Change Biennale.