Barbara Wren is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Upper Hunter Valley NSW. She has recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design, majoring in sculpture, performance and installation. Wren’s practice is diversified across various media encompassing video, sound, poetry, painting, textiles, sculpture, performance, and installation. Her work addresses environmental, feminist, philosophical and psycho-socio issues. A thematic undercurrent in her work is, philosopher and writer, Ken Wilber’s ‘integral theory’ perspective - the living totality of matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit. Her specific interest in relation to Wilber’s theory is where science, and quantum mechanics in particular, meets Eastern mysticism, Australia’s First Peoples cultural knowledge and practice encompassing the ‘integral’ approach to ‘Country’ and other ideologies and streams of philosophy and spirituality.

Wren’s work is currently concerned with the creation of interdisciplinary installations incorporating emerging theory from both the sciences and humanities. These projects engage audiences conceptually, aesthetically and immersively - where the viewer is drawn into the installation’s spatiality as a participant rather than a passive observer. Within these ‘relational’ spaces, she employs various mediums including light, reflection, colour, texture, smell and sound (frequencies, rhythm and tone) in order to create opportunities for the participant to experience temporary altered states of consciousness. Her intention in facilitating these states is to enable the collapse of culturally and socially conditioned identities and concepts, opening doors to unexpected perceptual and conceptual pathways. Wren’s methodology is fluid in nature, based on the premise that a particular idea requires the deployment of particular mediums, contexts and technologies.

Wren has shown in group projects in various galleries in NSW including Fish Bowl, UNSW Art and Design, Sydney, 2013; COFA Space (ADSpace), UNSW Art and Design, Sydney, 2014; Feminist Art in Sydney: Late Night Library at Glebe, Sydney, 2014; Kudos, Sydney, 2015; AirSpace Projects, Sydney, 2015 and Gaffa Gallery, Sydney, 2017.

Wren has also exhibited in group public sculpture events: Nox, 2015, Night Sculpture Walk at the Randwick Environment Park, Sydney – where she also acted as a Liaison Officer for UNSW staff and students and the Randwick City Council; and the Climate Change Festival, 2015, Michael Crouch Innovation Centre, UNSW, Sydney.