MADE IN BED’s Editor-in-Chief, Emily Crozier, interviews Noj Barker, the British multidisciplinary artist, about his World of Dots.  

Having put down his paintbrush during the first lockdown this year, Noj Barker has returned to his canvas and, on November 21st, launched a new online exhibition entitled KALEIDOSCOPES. The exhibition is available online for viewing through to the 19th of December, 2020. Below is an excerpt from the exhibition catalogue. 

“If you look through KALEIDOSCOPES, a new world is revealed before your eyes, with every twist and turn, the detail magnifies. The colours appear brighter and unique patterns are transported into various forms of art that merge together to create a hidden world of beauty. Just as Noj Barker’s immersive paintings, the closer you look, the more details draw you into his unending field of dots. When you look at his painting you hear music. His accumulations of dots are the sort psychedelia which blazes your retina.” 

Noj Barker’s dazzling artworks, composed of millions of dots, have earned him a cult following – and given his house and family a makeover. The painstaking process doubles as a form of therapy, he tells Louise Carpenter. 

Not that long ago, Minna Barker and her family were hanging out at home in Northamptonshire when a teenage school friend turned up. As she walked in, her eyes went to the walls, every single one covered with posters of millions of different-coloured dots. The four Barker children were dressed head to toe in dotty clothes: T-shirts, bucket hats, dresses. Minna and her teenage brother were carrying their phones in dotty cases. The sofa was covered with a dotty throw. Minna’s mother was wearing a silk shirt covered in dots and a headscarf, too. Minna’s artist father, Noj, the origin of the family’s eccentricity, emerged wearing a dotty silk tie. On the kitchen table there were plates covered in dots.