WESTERN FRONT – Try Keeping an Open Channel

Western Front is pleased to present Try Keeping an Open Channel, a solo exhibition by Australian artist Archie Barry. Featuring three new video works and an artist’s book, the exhibition reflects on themes of death, disembodiment, and transness to consider modes of perception and connection that exceed rationalism.

The “channel” of the title conjures multiple forms: a video signal, a waterway, a dream, or an altered state of consciousness. Each video similarly serves as a portal to a minor history. Second Line Work revisits Barry’s childhood within The School of Practical Philosophy; Dream for Reed reflects on the inner life of pioneering trans philanthropist Reed Erickson through his archives of writings, self-portraits, and poetry; and Water Builds Bridges draws on Barry’s own memories of loss and near-death experience.

Across the works, Barry engages technologies that evoke states of being out-of-body or out-of-time—green screen compositing, psychotropic substances, astral projection, and Erickson’s fictional ASCID (Altered State of Consciousness Induction Device) imagined as a rotary telephone in a garden—to shape trans visions that resist the framework of visibility. By prioritizing sensing over explaining, Barry inquires into the limits and possibilities of representation and corporeality, giving new expression to the vibrancy, uneasiness, and complexity of trans life and loss.

The videos in Try Keeping an Open Channel play on a continuous loop with a total duration of 56 minutes. Visitors are welcome to enter and exit the gallery at any time.

Archie Barry lying on white pillows outdoors, wearing a black hoodie, holding a yellow rotary phone receiver to their ear, with sunlight and flower shadows cast across their face.

About the Artist

Archie Barry is a visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia, who works primarily with video, performance, and music composition. They are drawn to time-based mediums to induce moments of affective intensity, drawing from lived experiences of loss, near death, and a politics of trans liberation. Attuned to histories of knowledge making and connection that do not easily map onto the “seen” or the rational, Barry’s practice questions dominant representations of selfhood as singular, stable, legible, and sequential. Their works have been exhibited widely in Australia, including at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Samstag Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Tasmania and Artspace, amongst other spaces.

Accessibility

Western Front’s gallery is a ground-floor, wheelchair-accessible space with a partially accessible all-gender bathroom.

What to expect: The exhibition includes videos with sound presented in both lit and darkened screening environments. Portable seating is available to visitors on request at reception. The works contain mature content including nudity, and descriptions of traumatic events, death, mental health, and sex acts.

Alternative formats: The video includes captions.

Further details about visiting and accessibility at Western Front can be found
here.

Acknowledgements

Presented with support from Creative Australia, the Jim Marks and Norman Macgeorge Travelling Scholarships (University of Melbourne), the Audain Foundation, and the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria.

Archie Barry, Dream for Reed (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Archie Barry, Dream for Reed (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.
Archie Barry, Second Line Work (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Archie Barry, Second Line Work (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.
Archie Barry, Second Line Work (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Archie Barry, Second Line Work (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.
Archie Barry, Dream for Reed (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Archie Barry, Dream for Reed (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.
Archie Barry, Water Builds Bridges (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Archie Barry, Water Builds Bridges (2025), video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.

We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.