commissined text for Low Profile publication
'Here's To Another Ten', published by ICIA, 2013
for 'Bring The Dead Back To Life' anthology,
Bookworks, 2012
- Some Questions About Artist Residencies
For 'Don't Look Back', Platform gallery 10th anniversary
publication, 2010
for 'The Earth Not A Globe' exhibition catalogue,
Rokeby Gallery, London, 2009
Selected online texts and videos
In Conversation with Edwin Burdis and Jamie Eastman, Arnolfini Interview with Yvette Gresle on FAD
Review of 'It must be told.'by Ria Hartley
Interview for Hayden Kays' 'I the God'
Review of 'Recreate A Nervy Pistol?' by Natalie Craven
Exhibitions of the Week, The Guardian, by Skye Sherwin
Keep Him Talking, expanded talks series
Only Son, music video for Astronauts
My previous collaboration with Sean Parfitt 2000-06
Quotes.
“Barry Sykes's life as an artist has taken him down some offbeat, and perhaps not strictly legal, avenues. His artworks-cum-social experiments include impersonating a part-time police community support officer and replicating/ripping off work by such strange bedfellows as romantic minimalist Cerith Wyn Evans and painter Karel Appel. He's even got his dad to realise work for him, as with a series of photos carried out according to his instructions. Trust, originality and morality rank among this trickster's quarry, in projects that unpick what goes on behind the scenes in art.”
-Skye Sherwin, The Guardian
“(His works) are as witty and pithy as any fable, but without the overt links to morality, they covertly revise the way we engage and assess any situation (...) If there were any overt point or truth to these works it is Sykes' engagement with others as a stark refusal to settle for essentialism, in any form. Rather each work becomes an amalgamation of each person's subjective experience, habits and techniques (...) A work like the Dad Directives or The Ongoing Song reveals the limits and impossibility of objectivity, and the dialectic of power and control for artists working today who engage in collaboration, or even more loosely as an artist.”
-Dani Admiss, ArtRabbit.com
“Stuck for things to do and waiting for latex to dry, I went to the Arts Centre to find some inspiration. Barry Sykes is the resident artist and he was awful, worse than Gilbert and George and that last video installation of a woman smashing a bike with a baseball bat. Why would you want to re-enact being a PCSO?! What's the point? Or am I missing the point?”
-Hannah Helmsley, hannahhemsley.blog.com
