Bamboo’s Blue Snow in Second Life

Blue Snow is the title Bamboo Barnes has given to her most recent exhibition, which opened at the Kondor Centre Art Gallery (curated by Hermes Kondor) on February 27th. I’m not sure of the origins for the title, but that hardly matters given the theme of the exhibition and the nature of Bamboo’s art.

Bamboo is a self-taught digital artist who started producing her work using Second Life in the form of avatar studies and images of other people’s art installations. In 2013 she started producing original pieces, and in the eight years since, she has developed a unique and striking style that has not only been exhibited in virtual spaces but also in the physical world.

For this exhibition, Bamboo plumbs personal depths, exploring her growing understanding of art as a means of expression and her development as an artist.

In her introduction to the exhibit she notes that “Art is never finished, just abandoned”, a statement that might at first seem a little confusing, as clearly, many pieces of art do stand as finished items – hence why we can see them in galleries and museums, reproduced, sold, hanging on our walls at home, and so on.

However the capitalisation of “Art” is important: signifying that rather than referencing any singular piece of art, Bamboo is referring to the medium in all its forms, be it painting, photography, sculpture, models, the written and / or spoken word and so on; recognising that it is always evolving, and that artists can change genre, format and style, taking on some and abandoning others as they find new or different ways to express themselves.

As is usual with Bamboo, all of the pieces offered within Blue Snow are endlessly vibrant, both in terms of the colours used and the degree of life they each exude. There is a strength about each one that captivates the eye and challenges the imagination, offering stories that might – when considering the central theme of the exhibition – enfold thoughts of the artist and her relationship with her work as well as revolving around our own perceptions of who we are and where we might be going.

Richly engaging, Blue Snow is another superb exhibition from one of SL’s leading digital artists.

SLurl Details

• Kondor Arts Centre (Waka, rated Moderate)