About the artist
Vanessa Barbay is a figurative artist focusing her practice-led research on animal representation. Completing her training as an oil painter in 1993, Vanessa has spent the last sixteen years commemorating the life of animal kin by inventing the shroud process, her name for a unique mortuary ritual. The animal body is encountered at their death site, their remains gathered and placed on a canvas while decomposing. Often dirt collects around the body drawing a silhouette. After a month the transformed bodies are photographed and painted on canvas using bitumen, oil and collected earth pigments to create a series of unique artworks.

Vanessa developed the shroud process during her PhD in the painting workshop at the Australian National University. Travelling to Gunbalanya in Western Arnhem Land she researched animal representation by Kunwinjku artists in rock and bark painting using delek (sacred ochres). She was given permission to employ delek in her work by traditional owners the Badari family. Raised in the Shoalhaven, Vanessa acknowledges her peers and elders in Wreck Bay Community and Sanctuary Point. In particular the late Laddie Timbery who taught her true history as a child and gifted her pipeclay to use in her work. 

“My father was a Magyar man who developed a taxidermy practice when I was growing up. Like him I felt a compulsion to collect the animal bodies discarded by roadsides, or on farms and beaches after deadly encounters with human kin. I witness, collaborate and give agency to animals on their country.”