---

+447535958939
barnabywessell@gmail.com

---

2026

2025

2024

2023

---

Select perfomance and projects
Sketchbooks
About

Drawing from a dream

Set in a Berlin apartment where I am a guest and not fully welcome, graphite on cartridge.

Large memory drawing underway.It is going to be inspired by a particularly difficult end to a canoe trip through oxford town.

The wandering costume

The idea was part of a bigger project of faerie costumes exploring folklore and the enchantment of our modern lands. It was inspired originally by a very particular feeling I got walking at night in a combe next to bristol. There was a moment on the walk when the forest that blankets that area spat us out and presented me with the image of bristol in the distance. It appeared to shimmer and churn in the night and it was clear that it had become a city of fairies. I was led to research folklore and paint scenes of enchanted lands, trying to find the modern connection to these old tales. I think i decided they were real in the end. And i have begun to imagine what this race of out of sight creatures are like and what they think of us. I think we’re really quite similar.
This costume was going to be one of the core fairies, about 3m in height when worn. The totem pole like creature would need a small group of other spirits clutching ropes tied to his head to just to keep him supported. His body was to be made up of a confused collection of symbols and body parts stolen from various traditions that i wont explain here so the ideas can still be used.
But the fact is the costume upped itself and wandered off halfway through me making it. He was was probably thrown away by my accommodation at the time (i was keeping him in the hall) but with no admission of this I must presume he fled. Its been really frustrating sinking all this work into him only to have him disappear but i am still really excited by some of the ideas within him so I hope He’ll live on in other works. (Or be rebirthed...)