Artist: Barry Kamen

Graces Mews presents If It Is, an exhibition of films and artworks by Barry Kamen (1963–2015).

Marking ten years since his passing, If It Is is the first major solo exhibition of the work of British artist Barry Kamen. The show centres on his film works, with two projections hanging in the centre of the gallery. Digitised and sequenced by Graces Mews from a recently recovered archive of the artist's 35mm film reels, these continuous projections offer an intimate encounter with Kamen's visceral and experimental processes. In PatRIOT (2000), images of London are overlaid with hand-drawn figures, while in Assembly (1995), pen marks applied directly onto blank celluloid become raw, explosive movements across the screen.

Kamen’s idiosyncratic and exploratory language of mark-making punctuate the surfaces of his paintings and works on paper, establishing rhythms across the exhibition that are both embodied and intentional. The exhibition includes a group of Kamen’s major early works, large abstract paintings titled Caged Waits (1991–93). Painted in a restrained palette of blue, cream and black, and using coffee and graphite, Kamen’s brushstrokes convey a tactility and depth, evoking the skull and spine — echoes of his own movement and skeletal belonging.

Fragments of script frequently appear in Kamen’s work, particularly simple conjunctions like ‘and’, ‘is’, ‘it. Rather than emptying language of meaning, Kamen elevated these words into existential signifiers, unearthing resonance in even its smallest units and drawing on Zen thought and ideas of wholeness, nothingness, and infinity. The title of the exhibition, If It Is, is taken from one of these works and attests to an overarching sense of questioning and ultimate acceptance.

Later works extend this attention to surface and material through the recurring motif of plasters, sometimes painted, sometimes functioning as a support for paint. Evoking skin, repair, and the body, these works blur the line between representation and objecthood, exemplifying Kamen’s search for new ways to inscribe meaning into matter itself.

The exhibition positions Kamen not only within the cultural ferment of 1980s London but also within a lineage of artists who have blurred disciplines and identities. His fusion of film, painting, collage, and drawing anticipates contemporary practices that resist medium-specificity, while his interrogation of repetition, gesture, and embodiment resonates strongly with today’s conversations around hybridity and representation. If It Is affirms Kamen’s role as both witness to and shaper of his cultural moment, and underscores the enduring relevance of his work in the present.