Barbara Campbell

Barbara Campbell (born 1961 ) is an Australian performance and installation artist.

Early life and education Campbell was born in Beaudesert, Queensland in 1961.

In 2015, she completed a PhD at Sydney College of the Arts, researching how migratory shorebirds direct human performance.

Campbell later started using video, setting up live video feedback so that the camera and the monitor could be used to create a dialogue between performer and audience.

Career Campbell used text as the starting point for her large-scale installation Conradania, based on Joseph Conrad’s acclaimed 1899 novel The Heart of Darkness set on the Congo River in Africa. Francis Ford Coppola based the film Apocalypse Now on Conrad's novel. Campbell spent eight weeks typing out The Heart of Darkness word for word on twenty lengths of xuan paper. She then filmed the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland, which is played on a small screen in front of the hanging rice paper.

1001 nights cast (2005-2008) is written by hundreds of collaborators, using video to live web-stream performances through the project's dedicated website. The work was inspired by The Arabian Nights, the famous anthology of stories and how storytelling was a means of survival; the young woman Scheherazade stalls her execution by weaving an endless story of such intrigue that the King Shahriyar eventually grants her a reprieve.

From 1982 to 1983, Campbell was Gallery Co-ordinator at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. She has also done research into the arts and culture sectors, and was an office bearer of the Queensland Artworkers Union (later Artworkers Alliance). In 1984, she ran the influential A Room art collective in George Street, Brisbane

Collections , four of her works are held in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.