Terry Barber

Terry Barber is a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily across drawing, painting, collage, sculpture and printmaking.

Terry’s work is generally concerned with found objects, hidden or forgotten stories, myths and secret histories, often using recycled materials as they offer the chance to work freely and experimentally. Since the loss of her mother four years ago, she has been taking inspiration from surfaces and objects uncovered in her family home during renovation. Some of these objects she had hidden as a child while others, which she had never seen before, had been tucked away many years beforehand, remaining hidden like magical charms to protect the occupants.

The terraced house has been home to Terry’s family for five generations so she has a strong sense of connection to place, ancestral history and stories that are captured in the very fabric of the property. Among these family ‘treasures’ is a collection of her mother’s books from the 1960s, which she has been using in a variety of ways to recreate the house as she remembers it from childhood, and to represent the people who have lived there over the past century – reconnecting the past with the present. “Drawing from old photos of my family – many of whom I never met – has made me feel close to them,” she says.