Irene Barberis

The Apocalypse in art history is presented as a hellish, end of the world scenario but this isn’t all the book of Revelation describes. It describes a magnificent futuristic city - an eternal Utopia, a place of light and unutterable beauty.

My work is not the hot, dramatic, figurative vision of Revelation that many artists who have worked with Revelation have reflected upon, such as Michelangelo [The Last Judgment], Albrecht Dürer [Apocalypse prints] and John Martin [The Great Day of His Wrath].

I have endeavored to explore other ways of visually interpreting this remarkable text. It's worth noting that the alternative name of the last book of the Bible is a word simply meaning the unveiling or revelation (of Jesus Christ) in its original Greek, but in English Apocalypse has acquired a primary definition of terminal catastrophe.

Most of the apocalypse perspectives in history, depicted mainly by male artists, concentrate on powerful dystopic images - I am working with aspects of revelation; of light and regeneration, logics and things which are beyond the end of what we know. My response is a female response to understandings, mechanisms of thinking, making and articulating.

Irene Barberis, 2014

Assistant: Heidi Vanzet