Barnaby Barford creates unique satiric narrative pieces primarily with ceramics. He works with both mass-market and antique found porcelain figurines, cutting up and exchanging elements or adding to them and repainting them, to create sculptures which are often sinister and ironic but invariably humorous. He draws a portrait of our contemporary lives.
Through his unique works, Barford explores all aspects of our society, following in the tradition of Hogarth, Chaucer, Dickens and Shakespeare. Barford’s work explores and celebrates the human condition with a dark sense of English humor and satire.
A kitsch 19th century figure of a peasant boy becomes a 20th century teenage thug in a hoodie; rustic maidens dancing on a bed of roses brandish guns; a charming scene of a Victorian family sharing a meal is undermined by the copious buckets of KFC fried chicken which they are devouring.
Graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2002, Barnaby has been the subject of several solo exhibitions in the UK, and has shown in exhibitions internationally. His work is part of both private and public collections.
Barnaby Barford was born in 1977 and is an artist and designer based in London. After studying 3D design at the University of Plymouth in 1999 he came to Faenza, Italy and applied at the ISIA Art and Design School, with a focus on ceramic.
It was in Faenza – at the Museo Internazionale di Ceramiche – that his passion for ceramics first started. From 2000 to 2002 he graduated in a master course in ceramics and glass at the London Royal College of Art.
His work crosses and blurs the boundaries between art, craft and design. Worked in many different areas from installation art using new media to designing humorous and thought provoking products to making one off sculptures and short editions of furniture. In 2005 Barnaby was invited to exhibit in Designboom’s ICFF mart in New York, today, Barnaby is represented by David Gill galleries in London. He also works independently with other designers such as André Klauser and Valeria Miglioli designing products for companies and design editors, such as Thorsten Van Elten.
