Thinking Business, 2020
Barbara Cleveland

Thinking Business is a survey exhibition of the Australian art collective Barbara Cleveland. Working together for over 15 years, Barbara Cleveland’s practice draws on the historical lineages of both the visual and performing arts. Thinking Business presents a suite of videos, photographs and prints from Barbara Cleveland’s archive.

The exhibition takes its title from author Hannah Arendt’s description of her friendship with Mary McCarthy. As Arendt wrote, “it’s not that we think so much alike, but that we do this thinking-business for and with each other.” Thinking-business is the shared intellectual and creative pursuit between women. This term became a way for Barbara Cleveland to conceptualise and affirm their long term collaboration and the body of work they had amassed since 2007. In turn, Thinking Business speaks not only to the collective’s unique mode of working together but, equally, to the larger thematics of female friendship, collaboration and artistic labour.