Lisa Barmby first visited Venice in 1982 and then lived in Paris from 1989 for 5 years where she studied drama at the prestigious Ecole Florent. Returning to Australia in 1994, she studied in the Diploma of Visual Art course at RMIT. Barmby’s work has since been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australia and Europe including Sous le Ciel de Paris, 2003, Galerie Vivienne, Paris; Venezia- Australis, Australian Artists in Venice 1900-2000, curated by Castlemaine Art Gallery in 2005 (touring nationally); Slender Harbour for Innovators 1, 2010, at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts and Flourish, 2011, at the Toyota Community Spirit Sculpture Exhibition. She won the Linden Postcard Prize in 2000 and the Linden Arts Spectrum Prize in 2002. In 2007, Barmby discovered Peggy Guggenheim’s gondola in Venice’s Naval Museum. This led to an entirely new sculptural direction and her first installation, Peggy & Venice, 2009, in Flinders Lane, in which she looked at Venice through Peggy Guggenheim’s courageous, theatrical life. Barmby was awarded a travel grant by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust in 2010 to complete a residency at La Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice. A highlight of the residency was meeting the gondola artisans of El Felze Associazione. One of them, Carlo Valese, invited Barmby to view his workshop casting brass gondola ornaments. Valese is one of the last craftsmen in Venice making these ‘cavài’ (seahorses), using an ancient 13th century “French sand-book” technique.