This is Barbara Cleveland is the second in a series of works exploring the life and legacy of the mythic performance artist Barbara Cleveland. During a brief period from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Cleveland is said to have produced a series of provocative, implicitly feminist performances before disappearing under mysterious circumstances.

This is Barbara Cleveland takes as its starting point Cleveland’s 1980 performance ­– A lecture on Everything and Nothing. The artists re-enact this text and re-stage a series of 1970s performances, as well as reflecting on Cleveland’s position in Australian art history. Here Cleveland’s story becomes a way to explore a series of broader themes: the legacies of ephemeral art and feminist histories, the complex status of the performance trace, and questions of authorship and authenticity.