Bruce Barber

Bruce Barber (born in New Zealand in 1950) is an artist, writer, curator, and educator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches at NSCAD University. He is best known for his early performance work, his Reading Rooms, Squat Projects and his writing and theory on Littoral Art. The video work shown on CIRCUIT includes performance documentation, reading room projects and Trace (time lapse) projects. His artwork has been shown at the Paris Biennale, the Sydney Biennial, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Walter Phillips Gallery, London Regional Gallery, and Artspace NZ in Auckland. Barber is the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization and of Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967–1973. He is co-editor, with Serge Guilbaut and John O'Brian of Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State. His critical essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines. His art practice is documented in the publication Reading Rooms.

CIRCUIT Resources

Interview with Mark Williams (2020)

Selected Exhibitions

2018
Assholes, Eidia House, Brooklyn, USA 

2017 
Party without Party, International Sokolovsko Festival of Ephemeral Art, Poland 
Bruce Barber: I swear, Te Tuhi, Auckland 

2016
Personal Structures: Open Borders, Venice Biennale, Italy 
Taste the Future, RIMONIM ARt Gallery, Miami, USA
Task Action, The Dowse Art Museum, Wellington 

2015
Imaginary Audience Scale, ARTSPACE, Auckland 
Bruce Barber: Performance Scores, Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi, Wellington 

2013
New to the Collection, The Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi, Wellington 
Continental Drift, Conceptual Art in Canada: The 1960s and 70s, Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, Germany

2011
Weak Force, Unified Field Theory, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, Canada 

2010
Swallow it Dog, Sydney Biennale Australia

2008
Bruce Barber: Reading and Writing Rooms, Te Tuhi, Auckland 
Interactions Art 10th International Performance Art Festival Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland 

2006
Mostly Harmless: a Performance Series, Govett Brewster, New Plymouth
Party without Party, RM Gallery, Auckland 

1989
N.S Artist Against Militarism, Anna Leowens gallery, Halifax, Canada
A Different War: Vietnam in Art, Washington, Ohio, Boston & Californa, USA