Sol Bailey Barker (b. 1987) is a British sculptor and installation artist. His practice uses sculpture as a means of reassessing and redressing the human's relationship with the natural world, encouraging a return to a phenological existence in harmony with nature and its cycles. Totemic carvings of ash, redwood and oak bring archetypal forms from the unconscious to light, their shamanic shapes suggesting the endurance of the mythological as the accumulated wisdom of generations. Abstraction here is common culture, familiar forms and materials a way of deconstructing the detached position of the viewer. These works act as conduits for the individual to reconnect to the greater whole that is nature, fomenting a sense of empathy and belonging.
Functioning as living portals, part guardian, part witness, these works hold catastrophe and regeneration in tension, proposing new modes of ecological consciousness that connect ephemeral past, volatile present, and speculative future.
Recent solo shows include Pansentient Arboriculture (proposition studios) Exhibitions span Europe and the Americas, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Bogotá (Colombia), Bold Tendencies, Lamb Gallery, Alice Black and Beaux Arts (London) Tuleste Gallery (NYC), Impakto, Now Gallery and Pinta art fair (Lima ), almanaque fotográfica and Zona Maco (Mexico City), Mahala Berlin Art Week (Berlin)
