Riki Colon
July 3, 2023
Qinza Najm
July 3, 2023
Theresa Byrnes
Special guest
Bio
Theresa Byrnes was born in 1969 in Australia and moved to New York in 2000. She was introduced to oil painting at the age of Five. Family expeditions to paint “en plain air” often ending a mess of twigs, earth and pigment. In her teens, & 20’s she squatted huge warehouses in Sydney’s inner west, where she painted hundreds of canvases. She began selling her work at 16 and exhibitions soon followed and have not stopped. Founded and curated TACTICAL STREAM in 2016, a series of group exhibitions, where artists continue to develop an activist voice. In 2019 the "fresh" series (paintings & performance) expressed her disillusionment with making objects, resulting in “The sustainable Stain -TBG LAB" questioning, “How can creative freedom be environmentally brutal?” Experimenting with all-natural & found materials. Byrnes makes paintings rejecting the idea that archival art materials are of importance. She declares; “Decay is magnificent, giving life while letting of it.” She currently uses found wood for painting & pyrography. She is developing her next performance “Outline For A Tree”, for August 2023. All are part of the IHaveABody project and documentary."My entire life I have pursued making art regardless of my body. now my body is my art experiment. Disability is rebellious, intrigued by the body, I push boundaries."
Statement
I am a painter, performance artist, author, curator and activist. A truth seeker led by the action of painting. I demystify freedom, harnessing it in its purest state, in the mistake, entering it (the mistake) brings me to new ways of seeing. I am an eco-process artist who never shirks from the community. responsibility or from confronting mainstream authority, habitual, normalized behavior, & unchallenged beliefs. Painting is as old as the history of mankind. Historians, Philosophers, and Anthropologists find answers about our existence through painting. From Rock Painting to Pop Art, painting accompanies the human being throughout its history. My painting and performance work explores our human relationship with nature, the macrocosm and the microcosm of life from conception to decay. In 2016 I married the force of nature and the force of painting in my performance BRIDE. My performances are visceral contemplations and theatrical events based on my studio practice. In the studio I make paintings, and in performance, I am inside the painting process itself. When I view art I feel the process in my body. I am an action painter & my performances often are political action. My painting is muscular, investigating being human. Stained sidewalks, layers of carelessness, oil, coffee, grease, paint - the streets are the museum of every man and woman. “Careless” video art 2001. I began as an oil painter (all archival materials). September 11th birthed me into political nihilism. I then used trashed wood fragments to paint on & enamel and spray paint, in 2004-09, ink and water. & my hair as a brush in 2008. Now I make pigments from ochre rocks, soil, charcoal and flowers. Not dependent on art store franchises and environmentally hazardous art materials, no longer feeding a political system in the act of making art. As artists, we mirror the act of creation and are in essence the earth. I believe decay is central to all life. Decay is a magnificent occurrence to work with not fight against. I collaborate with the elemental spirit of the materials themselves. Just as food, flowers and herbs can be medicinal and transformative, so can pigments, grounds and surfaces. Currently, working with pyrography, burning wood transports and connects me to another time, perhaps the beginning, when we humans made our first marks. I breathe in the smoke, and the wood sings and squeaks, letting me know I am collaborating with nature.
