Barry Anthony Finan
Visual Arts recipient 2024
Barry Anthony Finan (b. 1958) is a self-taught artist born in Manchester. He has been a Venture Arts studio artist for approximately 15 years.
Finan sees himself as a writer, actor and artist and produces bold, text-based visual art he calls ‘WRRIGHHTINNGSERRSS’. The style is unique, with repetitive letters that elongate his words, which can become scripts, personal messages and hopes for the future. Through the work, the viewer is invited into Finan’s interior world, to engage with his thoughts and his fascination with particular objects and people. It is important for Finan to enact the work through readings and broadcasting. He works with a range of materials, including paper, canvas, metal, wood and ceramics, with the latter being of significant interest in recent work.
Finan’s work is representative of him alone and presents a view of his life and ambitions, which exists as valuable and important snapshot of a neurodiverse narrative.
‘It’s good yeah, I want to do writing forever and ever’’
Finan is supported to develop his work by Venture Arts, an award-winning visual arts organisation working with learning disabled artists, and has been showing nationally since 2014. Recent exhibitions of his work include The Hand That Makes The Sound, Tate Late, Liverpool (2023) and the British Ceramics Biennial 2019; and group exhibitions of Yess Lad, Festival of Making, Blackburn (2023) and TJ Boulting, London (2022).
“Barry Anthony Finan is a neurodivergent artist who has been working from our studios in Manchester for many years, and we have always been huge supporters of his brilliant work. This award will be life-changing for him as an artist. It will give him time and space to further develop his work and build on his artistic ideas and text based expression. I look forward to seeing how his practice develops and also to new audiences seeing this wonderful work.”
Examples of work
YESS LAD, 2019
Marker on canvas roll, a series of 3 all varying in length, 110cm x 500cm. A series of 3 large scale canvas scrolls emblazoned with continuous writing in black marker listing Finan’s hopes and dreams for the future with memories of his childhood too. Presented at Festival of Making, Blackburn (2023).
LAMMPPOSSTERRSS, 2022
Ceramic, growing collection each at least 30cm x 15cm. Finan has a great interest in lampposts, specifically those from 1948 in Manchester. Lammppossterrss creates a visual representation of these lampposts, with his thoughts. hopes and dreams etched around the entire vessel. This is an evolving piece which Finan returns to often. Presented at Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair with Outside In (2023).
JUMMPINNG ONN TELEVISSIONN, 2018
Ceramic, 27cm x 30cm. Vintage cast TV in ceramic. Finan has etched his writing into the TV screen. Presented at Spilling Out, a joint presentation with Castlefield Gallery and The Manchester Contemporary (2018).
YES I WANNT TO DO TRRICKSSERSS, 2016
Posca Pens on canvas, 1m x 4m. Finan’s work is intended to be a script read aloud. This is a very early piece and the first where he worked on large scale canvas and used colour. Presented at Exchanges, The Whitworth, Manchester (2019–2020). The works is part of The Whitworth modern and contemporary collection and was paired with a Tracey Emin piece from the same collection.
