14.08.2013 Views

Art Catalogue Wayne Barker 2013

Overview of Wayne Barker artworks - With texts of Brenda Atkinson, Wilhem Van Rensburg, Carol Brown, Prof. Alan Krump, Braam Kruger and more. Published 2013

Overview of Wayne Barker artworks - With texts of Brenda Atkinson, Wilhem Van Rensburg, Carol Brown, Prof. Alan Krump, Braam Kruger and more. Published 2013

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

<strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong>’s artistic career spans two decades, marked by a bitter-sweet mix of<br />

politics, poetry and a passion for subversion. <strong>Barker</strong>’s work over the last several years<br />

has sought to work out his identity (as a white person of Afrikaner heritage) in relation<br />

to South African history. His work has dealt with apartheid South Africa’s most violent<br />

years to the new democratic dispensation, but always trying to explore the contradictory<br />

impulses of an ‘African identity’. Identity politics, as well as African state politics are<br />

intrinsically linked to the continent’s commodification. <strong>Barker</strong>’s work tries to show how<br />

these factors are all intertwined in everyday identity politics. His paintings try to interrogate<br />

a history of colonialism, racism, the way people view Others, issues of identity<br />

and culture.<br />

At times part Pop <strong>Art</strong>, at others a layered deployment of traditional genres and media,<br />

<strong>Barker</strong>’s work stands as much an indictment of colonialism as of misplaced political<br />

correctness, From the first seduction to the twist in the gut, it is as beautiful as it is<br />

provoking. ‘The Coke Adds Life’ series is a ghoulish installation dealing with the awful<br />

irony of the cheapness of consumerism and the cheapness of life during the civil war<br />

in Mozambique in the 1980’s. The glamourising of a multinational carbonated sugar<br />

beverage in preference to subsistence food is reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s absurd<br />

statement revisited in Africa two centuries later. The installation, adorned by contemporary<br />

advertising lights, AK 47’s, traditional religious icons and a Tonga maize-grinding<br />

vessel are chilling reminders of the clash between past and present, ‘Blood’ and ‘Hope’,<br />

impassive multinationalism and ancient rituals in the chaos of present day Africa.<br />

Brenda Atkinson


« Over the years I have always been interested<br />

in the economic and social changes taking<br />

place in South Africa: the plight of the underprivileged<br />

is at the heart of my subject matter.<br />

Using fragments of Pierneef’s paintings as<br />

readymade, my work suggests new meanings<br />

from the past colonial way of seeing Africa.<br />

My work depicts the anarchy of a society in<br />

transition, a country trying to make sense of it<br />

all.»<br />

Transit Culture / 1990 / oil and found objects on canvas / 118 x 127 cm


Hope / 1995 / mixed media and neon tubing on wood / 200 x 123 cm


Sorrow / 2007 / oil, neon and objects on canvas / 200 x 200


Clandestin / 2008 / mixed media and neon tubing on board / 181 x 243 cm


<strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong> is a latter day Guy Debord, a belated artist who would have fitted in<br />

perfectly with Debord’s coterie of Situationist International artists. Such artists are ‘psychogeographers’,<br />

exploring and reporting on psychogeographical phenomena, or on the specific effects the<br />

geographical environment, consciously organized or not, have on the emotions and behaviour of<br />

individuals . Their chief means of psycogeographical investigation are the strategies of dérive and<br />

détournement, the former being defined as drifting and deliberately trying to lose oneself in the city<br />

, a feat early and admirably achieved in <strong>Barker</strong>’s 1980s Pretoria map works , and also, admirably,<br />

and ironically, in ‘loosing’ himself in his South African National Defense Force stint. The latter,<br />

détournement, is defined as the transformation of both everyday ephemera, such as advertising<br />

slogans and comic strips, and significant cultural products, such as old master painters . <strong>Barker</strong> deconstructs<br />

typical Pierneef landscapes, using them as ‘wallpaper’ for his own exploration of place.<br />

<strong>Barker</strong> is a veritable psychogeographer of the South African landscape.<br />

For these ‘geographers’ détournement is “a method of propaganda, a method which testifies to the<br />

wearing out and loss of importance of these [old cultural] spheres.” Essentially, it is a form of<br />

redistribution of culture. Détournement could, however, also be described as ‘creative plagiarism’.<br />

According to Lautréamont, however, “plagiarism is necessary. It is implied in the idea of progress.<br />

It clasps an author’s sentence tight, uses his expressions, eliminates a false idea, and replaces it<br />

with the right idea.” Many precursors of the Situationist International can thus be identified such as<br />

the Dadists, the Surrealists and the Lettrists.<br />

<strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong>’s psychgeographical strategies have evolved dramatically over his prodigious artistic<br />

career. He no longer loses himself in and through his art. He has found a place in the South African<br />

art world. He redistributes culture in a unique way. “Everybody wants to find their place in the<br />

world” according to Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar . But where is it and what is it? How does one<br />

recognize place as important and not merely empty space? What makes one place special and another<br />

not? In a world where people continuously fight over land, where land is readily and sometimes<br />

violently redistributed, where some spaces are safe and others not, place is a living reality that<br />

can cause conflict or bind people together. In <strong>Barker</strong>’s art he is quite explicit: the words, ‘worlds<br />

apart’ echo through many of his landscapes.<br />

<strong>Barker</strong>’s art stands midst in the contemporary art world and its endeavor to reinvent place: Dean<br />

and Millar’s book explores exactly that: they show that “some artist find inspiration in the heterogeneity<br />

of the crowded city street, while others celebrate the wilds of nature as a counter to urban<br />

life. Some present imagined or fantastic worlds of their own invention, or explore the way place is<br />

often a creation of the mind. Others investigate the deep marks that myth and history can leave on<br />

the land, or consider how place can be used as a form of political control. Territorial divisions demarcating<br />

one place from another, often with terrible consequences, are the chosen subject-matter<br />

of many artists; others prefer to look at itinerant wanderers with no claims on the earth, or to focus<br />

on anonymous non-places that lack any real identity of their own.” <strong>Barker</strong> stakes his claim in this<br />

landscape of landscapes unequivocally: “I am interested in how the media, through popular images,<br />

inform, confuse and rape the African continent. For the past two decades, since 1987, I have also<br />

been dealing with land, which is quite trendy now. My approach has been to deconstruct the icons<br />

of South African painting, particularly works by Pierneef.”<br />

<strong>Barker</strong>’s art is as much the deconstruction, the ‘wearing out’ of obsolete cultural icons, as it is<br />

about the reconstruction, the restitution of the landscape. He was, however, overlooked for many<br />

prestigious exhibitions dealing with issues of land and place, notably, Panoramas of passage: changing<br />

landscapes of South Africa that toured the US in 1995. His work is also often omitted from political<br />

redress in perfunctory exhibitions hailing the South African ‘decade of democracy’ or from<br />

the faddish quest for a new South African identity . <strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong> is, however, not a marginalized<br />

artist, working in the margins: he has made his mark, quite literally, on Pierneef prints, and on the<br />

South African art scene, as well as the international art circuit, having exhibited his world map installation<br />

of army uniforms and beer bottles, entitled The World is Flat at the Trade Routes:History<br />

and Geography Biennale in Johannesburg (1997) and doing his performance piece at the Venice<br />

Biennale (1997), washing the feet of the curators, forgiving them for the sin of omitting Africa from<br />

this prestigious event.<br />

He has not only become a (re)distributor of culture, but also a painterly cultural theorist, analogous<br />

to the literary cultural theorist, JM Coetzee. It is no coincidence that when Coetzee wrote White<br />

Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (1988), critiquing the picturesque and the sublime<br />

in the South African landscape in the travel writing of the 19th century colonialists William<br />

Burchell and Thomas Pringle (and their futile attempts at taming this wilderness), <strong>Barker</strong> was<br />

critiquing the picturesque in contemporary South African art. <strong>Barker</strong> has been trying indefatigably<br />

to make sense of the morass of the post-colonial apartheid legacy with regard to land, as well as of<br />

the effect globalization has on place. <strong>Barker</strong>’s art is no mere critique; it is a quest for the essence of<br />

freedom of a place. He realigns the politics of place: violence in and conflict over land give way to<br />

introspection over the peace of and in a place. <strong>Barker</strong> ceaselessly asks whether freedom is merely<br />

fought over, whether freedom is bought, or whether freedom is simply given to people. <strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong><br />

has always reflected the complexities of the South African cultural mix in his work . Cultures in<br />

his work, however, are never ‘worlds apart’. Rather, they are hybrids of each other: mutually affecting<br />

and reflecting change among one another and finding mutual co-habitation in this place we call<br />

South Africa.<br />

Wilhem Van Rensburg<br />

<strong>Art</strong> on Paper Gallery


Hope 2007 / oil, neon and objects on canvas / 200 x 200 cm Masked Landscapes 2004 / enamel on digital prints / 25 x 25 cm


The Rest is History / 2008 / mixed media and neon tubing on canvas / diptych / 200 x 400 cm


LAND & DESIRE SERIES //<br />

B arker’s landscapes, which unlike ,Pierneef’s have superimposed images of people, as well as<br />

being overlaid with pop imagery indicating material desire, also contain cartographers’ signs and<br />

route markers bringing to mind the subordination of the land under the colonists’ control. Marking<br />

and mapping imply possession (and dispossession) and, as we look deeper into his paintings, we see<br />

how possession and desire are linked. He also uses words to emphasise his theme and these words,<br />

which are scattered sparingly across the compositions, tease out ideas. “ Worlds”, “apart”, “desire”,<br />

“land” all come together in a relationship of control and commerce.<br />

T his serie is undoubtedly built on his own artistic history where he has, in one way or another,<br />

pursued the same ideas. Sometimes this pursuit has been outrageous and symptomatic of a man<br />

who is angry with a complacent society. These works veil that anger by attractive surfaces but their<br />

strength lies in that passion, which is the quality which lifts <strong>Barker</strong>’s work above the ordinary into<br />

the extraordinary.<br />

CAROL BROWN<br />

Untitled / 2004 / monoprint and enamel on canvas / 19 x 17 cm


Untitled / 2004 / monoprint and enamel on canvas / 19 x 17 cm<br />

Untitled / 2004 / monoprint and enamel on canvas / 19 x 17 cm


ROCK’N ROLL SERIES //<br />

Vaak en Moeg / 2010 / oil and neon tubing on canvas / 200 x 200 cm Rock’n Roll Series / 2010 / mixed media on canvas / 216 x 190 cm


Mandela Light / 2010 / oil and enamel on canvas / 300 x 300 cm Jozie Rock ‘n Roll / 2010 / oil and enamel on canvas / 300 x 300 cm


LEGENDS SERIES //<br />

T he ‘Legends’ series deals with individuals. Personally significant to the artist, they also<br />

resonate in the history of South Africa. As ‘household names’ they have lost some of their individuality<br />

and have become ciphers for a passage in South Africa’s story that they influenced, precipitated<br />

or described. Nevertheless, behind the familiar face and the name attached to it lies an<br />

individual life, far richer, more complex and nuanced than the invariable one liner that it evokes.<br />

While <strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong> is undoubtedly referencing their contributions to our history, he also appears<br />

to be demanding that we look beyond their obvious achievements to the personality that produced<br />

them. In titling this series ‘Legends’ it seems that he is reminding us that a legend loses its grip on<br />

the reality that produced it by being told too many times and by having too much erased (or conveniently<br />

forgotten) that confl icts with the‘official’ story being told.<br />

F or <strong>Barker</strong> the reason why they are remembered is the fact that they challenged the system in<br />

one way or another. This defiance, be it of the system or of the conditions they found themselves<br />

in, is what draws him to his subjects and underpinning each painting as a process of research into<br />

their lives. Each work is his personal take on their actions for change or reform. These are his<br />

legends and he has created a tableau in which their need to act, their refusal to accept injustice<br />

and their desire to better that which is around them are what engages him. When he speaks of his<br />

‘legends’ he does so with genuine affection and admiration. I suspect he sees them as fellow-strugglers<br />

against injustice and this comradery evokes a playful familiarity which sees C.J. Langenhoven,<br />

author of Die<br />

Stem, facing-off against Enoch Sontonga, author of Nkosi Sikelel i’Africa, in Duel. The punning<br />

title has as much to do with them fi ghting it out, High Noon style, as it does to their dual role as<br />

authors of our current national anthem.<br />

Legends Serie / 2010 / oil on canvas, neon tubing and objects / 138 x 138 cm


Siel: Nelson Mandela / 2010 / mixed media and neon tubing on canvas / 138 x 138 cm<br />

Miriam Makeba / 2010 / oil on canvas, neon tubing and objects / 200 x 200 cm


DRAWINGS //<br />

FEAR / 170 x 170 cm / pastel charcoal and enamel<br />

Money for Nothing and the Chicks for Free 1 & 2 / 2010 / digital prints and watercolor 30 x 40 cm


Untitled / 1997 / 300 x 170 cm / pastel charcoal, celotape and enamel Le Monde à l’Envers / 1997 / 300 x 170 cm / pastel charcoal, celotape and enamel


WATERCOLORS //<br />

DANCE OF LIFE


PORTRAITS //<br />

Ladies of the Night / 2012 / oil on canvas / 39.5 x 27 cm


Young Woman in Berlin 1 & 2 / 2011 / water colour on paper / 30 x 20 cm<br />

Amy 1 & 2 / 2012 / oil on canvas / 30 x 20 cm<br />

Ladies of the Night / 2012 / oil on canvas / 39.5 x 27 cm


HEALING SERIES //<br />

H ealing has been a central theme for <strong>Barker</strong> for many years. Along with his under-recognised<br />

social responsiveness this can be seen very clearly in The Bees, the Beekeeper, the Children and the<br />

<strong>Art</strong>ist (2007-2008). Submitted as his work as a finalist in the Sasol Wax Awards (won in that year<br />

by Walter Oltman) the final work presented was underpinned by a complex process of collaboration<br />

and community engagement that would have ramifications lasting long beyond the duration of the<br />

exhibition of the works. Beginning with a workshop with underprivileged kids that <strong>Barker</strong> encountered<br />

in Troyeville he had the children trace their hands (and other symbolic drawings produced) on<br />

pieces of paper. These drawings were then taken into the fi eld with a beekeeper and the children<br />

cut the traced images out of active combs and then replaced them in the hives. Over the weeks the<br />

bees worked to rebuild the missing areas of their hives but the scar made by the incision led to the<br />

new area formed on the comb being constructed from wax cells of a different colour and texture to<br />

the original. Clearly referencing the legacy of damage and the process of healing, the reformed<br />

hives became an integral part of multi-media panels that <strong>Barker</strong> created as a series.<br />

@africa.com / 2001 / found objects and oil on canvas with recycled books / 200 x 400 cm


Guérir / 2007 / beeswax, paraffin wax, oil paint, neon tubing, paper / 140 x 80 cm


JOBURG, CAPE TOWN & POLOKWANE ART MUSEUMS //


STANDARD BANK MUSEUM & CIRCA GALLERY //


Red light Jozie /, 200 x 200 cm, oil, neon and objects on can-<br />

« Most of the women portrayed in the beadworks are real women who have been photographed.<br />

Often from Zimbabwe, Zambia and Swaziland, they are mostly well educated, but<br />

through circumstance have been forced to turn to prostitution to survive. The concept of a<br />

beadwork is meticulously thought through and conceived over a short period. While making<br />

the drawings on computer I am very aware of the pop artists as well the way Wassily Kandinsky<br />

produced: fast and furious. Beads cant be mixed like on a pallet, so flattening colors<br />

is a key consideration when composing the work. In the past I deconstructed and used<br />

images, putting African craft objects onto my Pierneef paintings. In the current bead works<br />

I use Pierneef’s landscapes as found objects that I collage into images of my experience of<br />

everyday life in <strong>2013</strong>»


BEAD WORKS //<br />

I n this series, <strong>Barker</strong> has drawn upon local craft and materials to invent his own language of critique<br />

and celebration. These new artworks are constructed from strung glass beadwork (an African<br />

technique for presenting symbolic meaning in visual terms that has been utilized for centuries) to<br />

make a seemingly fl at, painterly plane that also has a three-dimensionality embedded in it. Within<br />

the history of South African visual art language, networks of strung beads have been employed for<br />

everything from simple ‘love letters’ presented by a maiden to her beloved to the adornment of<br />

princely palaces and everyday ceremonial costume. These have usually been ascribed to‘traditional’<br />

or ‘native’ production.<br />

I n the work <strong>Barker</strong> presents here, this rich tradition has been appropriated to present a visual<br />

plane that viscerally echoes the very medium of oil paint: the suspension of solid particles in the<br />

carrier of oil or another medium. While echoing mosaics and other similar art forms, <strong>Barker</strong> has<br />

reinvigorated painting by addressing one of its own fundamental desires: the illumination of the flat<br />

surface not just through strategies of perspective or drawing but also through the illusion of radiating<br />

light by means of suspended particles of light that refract and project their own inner power of<br />

illumination.<br />

I n terms of subject, this series presents the promise of reconciliation by overlaying images of those<br />

who could be claimed to have been most marginalised by apartheid and Pierneef’s vision – black<br />

women – upon and into his re-problematised landscapes. This, coupled with a new interpretation of<br />

the free abstract painterly gesture so typical of <strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong> invigorates his latest work as much as<br />

it resolves both the picture plane and the subject it addresses. In this he has adopted a new language<br />

of tolerance and in this new native tongue demonstrated the lie of the speech of hate which he has<br />

so consistently raged against.<br />

B arker has always raged, but the product of that rage is gentleness. Overarching all that he has<br />

done is a desire to see healing take place. He has always been outraged by injustice but is always<br />

prepared to see inherent good in people.


Land for Sale / 2012 / beads / 200 x 200 cm Lady Gaga / 2012 / beads / 200 x 200 cm


THE WORLD IS FLAT //<br />

I t was at The Castle in 1995 that The World is Flat began its life as Is the World Flat? - on a show called<br />

“Scurvy” organised by <strong>Barker</strong>, Kevin Brand and Brett Murray - in which they recolonised the military museum<br />

and claimed it for contemporary culture.<br />

F or <strong>Barker</strong> it was a milestone and a political victory. Particularly considering that in order to construct his<br />

work - in the very first room ever built at the Castle - he would have to request materials from the army. In 1995<br />

the Defence Force was trying desperately to incorporate the former resistance armies into its ranks. «I had to<br />

negotiate with them,» says <strong>Barker</strong>. «I told them it’s all about forgiveness.»<br />

T oday <strong>Barker</strong> says that “Scurvy” was the first time that he began to think globally about his work. That he<br />

was looking at identity. What were his own colonial origins? Was the VOC logo - the first multi-national logo in<br />

the world - a bit like the Coca Cola logo today? In a press release for “Scurvy” he added:<br />

«Is this how we see the world through the media? Through a flat plain of images?»<br />

Excerpt from the artist’s monograph, 2000..


TRUTH & RECONCILIATION<br />

COMMISSION //<br />

Europa Descending Africa / 1997 / neon tubing & plastic dolls / size variable<br />

Notice / 1997 / 300 x 170 cm / pastel charcoal, celotape and enamel


Nothing Gets Lost in the Universe / 1996 / latex gloves and found objects /


Nothing Gets Lost in the Universe / 1996 / latex gloves and found objects /


COKE ADDS LIFE


Coke Adds Life» is a ghoulish installation dealing with the<br />

awful irony of the cheapness of consumerism and the cheapness<br />

of life during the civil war in Mozambique in the 1980s.<br />

The glamourising of a multinational carbonated sugar beverage<br />

in preference to subsistence food is reminiscent of Marie<br />

Antoinette’s absurd statement revisited in Africa two centuries<br />

later. The installation, adorned by contemporary advertising<br />

lights, AK 47’s, traditional religious icons and a Tonga maizegrinding<br />

vessel are chilling reminders of the clash between past<br />

and present, «Blood» and «Hope,» impassive multinationalism,<br />

and ancient rituals in the chaos of present day Africa.<br />

Professor Alan Krump<br />

His and Her Mozambique / 1995 / mixed media and neon tubing on metal / 200 x 246 cm


ERASURE //


A paper structure is turning as if by its own volition in the centre of a<br />

darkened room. It has been torn and ripped and through the gashes<br />

another cube of paper can be seen, its surface also gashed and pierced.<br />

Upon this revolving screen two moving images are projected, their<br />

subject hard to discern due to their projection on a damaged surface.<br />

In the background, Bob Dylan’s song ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ can<br />

be heard, sometimes louder and then sometimes softer than the overlay<br />

of other voices, taken from an archive of historical media recordings.<br />

Around this three-dimensional kaleidoscope is a circular barrier of salt,<br />

preventing direct access other than watching and listening.


Slave Painting Slave Doll / 1992 / media bronze plastic oil on belgium linen / variable sizes<br />

She was the first black girl to go to<br />

a white school but on the arm of a child.


Salt on the Wound / 2010 / Painted found objects Something Fishy / 2010 / Painted found objects<br />

Black Label / 2010 / Painted found objects Shop til you Drop / 2010 / Painted found objects<br />

PAINTED FOUND OBJECTS


Young <strong>Art</strong>ist Who Signs Contract with a Galarist / 2012 / bronze 1/3 / 155 x 76 cm


WAYNE C. BARKER //<br />

« There is always more to <strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong> that meets the eye, or the heart, for his legacy<br />

will be an enduring one, as the best of the best this country has everproduced, reverberating<br />

long afer his or our time.<br />

It is impossible to overestimate <strong>Barker</strong>’s contribution the art worldas a whole. When he<br />

founded F.I.G (Famous International Gallery), where artists who cut their teeth there,<br />

reads like a who’s who of today’s art circuit: William Kentridge, Neil Goedhals, Lisa Brice,<br />

Joachim Schonfeldt, Kevin Brandt, Kendell Geers, Stephen Cohen, Ian Waldeck, Barend de<br />

Wet, MinetteVari, etc.<br />

Braam Kruger, 2006 Business Day <strong>Art</strong><br />

PERSONAL<br />

»<br />

Born<br />

Pretoria, South Africa, 1963<br />

Tertiary Education<br />

Postgraduate degree, Fine <strong>Art</strong>, Ecole des Beux <strong>Art</strong>, Luminy, Marseille, France, 1998<br />

BA Fine <strong>Art</strong>, Michaelis, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 1984<br />

Diploma Fine <strong>Art</strong>, Technikon Pretoria, South Africa, 1981<br />

Awards<br />

Volkskas Atelier, Merit award winner, 1998<br />

Volkskas Atelier, Merit award winner, 1992<br />

Other<br />

<strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong> has been involved in numerous projects, symposiums and workshops, involving<br />

academics, artists as well as children and communities.<br />

<strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong> founded the Famous International Gallery, South Africa, 1989–1995<br />

SOLO EXHIBITIONS<br />

2012 ‘Love Land’, Circa Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa.<br />

2010 ‘Super Boring’ [solo exhibition and retrospective], SMAC <strong>Art</strong> Gallery,<br />

Stellenbosch; Standard Bank, Polokwane and Standard Bank Gallery,<br />

Johannesburg, South Africa.<br />

2008 ‘Heal’ [solo exhibition], UCA gallery, Cape Town, South Africa Colletion101,<br />

[group exhibition] SMAV <strong>Art</strong> Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa.<br />

2007 ‘007’ [group exhibition], Polokwane <strong>Art</strong> Museum. Sasol Wax <strong>Art</strong> Award<br />

Exhibition Johannesburg <strong>Art</strong> Gallery, Johanesburg, South Africa.<br />

2005 ‘Land and Desire’, Gerard Sekoto Gallery, Alliance Française, Johannesburg.<br />

2004 ‘Evidence’, ARTSPACE, Johannesburg, South Africa.<br />

2003 ‘Black & white’, <strong>Art</strong> on Paper, Johannesburg, South Africa.<br />

2003/2 ‘Lovers and Gurus’, Contemporary <strong>Art</strong> Space, Caen, France – 2 solo shows.<br />

2002 ‘ITS ALL GOOD’, Crosspath Culture, New York.<br />

‘Erratum’, Alliance Française of Johannesburg, South Africa.<br />

2001 ‘Two Cousins’, Fig Gallery, London, UK.<br />

2000 ‘Lost and Found’, NSA Gallery, Durban.<br />

1999 ‘Fin de Ciècle’, Nantes, France.<br />

1998 ‘Kunst is Kinderspielen’, Kunsthalle, Krems, Austria.<br />

‘Beauty in Politics’, Millennium Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa.<br />

‘All Washed Up in Pretoria’, Millennium Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa.<br />

1997 ‘All Washed Up in Africa’, Gallery Frank Hanel, Cape Town, South Africa


COLLECTIONS //<br />

South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, Sandton Civic Gallery,<br />

Sandton, South Africa, Johannesburg <strong>Art</strong> Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa,<br />

Durban <strong>Art</strong> Museum, Durban, South Africa, Gertrude Posel Gallery, University of<br />

Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, GENCOR Collection, South Africa, Anglo<br />

American Collection, South Africa, SASOL Collection, South Africa, SABC Collection,<br />

South Africa.Various private, local and international art collectors of note.<br />

// SELECTED PUBLICATIONS, CATALOGUES AND ARTICLES //<br />

Super Boring, celebrating 25 years of <strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong>’s work (catalogue), 2010, Marelize van Zyl<br />

(ed). Published by SMAC Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa.<br />

The ID of South African <strong>Art</strong>ists (catalogue), 2004, Sharlene Khan (ed). Fortis Circus Theatre,<br />

Holland.<br />

<strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong>: <strong>Art</strong>ist’s Monograph, 2000, Brenda Atkinson (ed). Published in association with<br />

Chalkam Hill Press & the French Institute of South Africa.<br />

Trade Routes: History and Geography (catalogue), 1997, Matthew DeBord (ed), 2nd Johannesburg<br />

Biennnale.<br />

Contemporary South African <strong>Art</strong>: Gencor Collection, 1997, Kendal Geers (ed) <strong>Art</strong> in South Africa:<br />

The Future Present, 1996, Sue Williamson and Ashraf Jamal (eds)<br />

Colours, (catalogue), 1996, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt.<br />

Africus: First Johannesburg Biennale (catalogue), 1995 Candice Breitz.<br />

Black Looks, White Myths (catalogue), 1995, Octavio Zaya (ed)<br />

Various reviews and articles in newspapers, art magazines and journals both locally and<br />

international. Including: NKA: Journal of Contemporary Africa <strong>Art</strong>, USA, <strong>Art</strong> South Africa, South<br />

African quarterly magazine, published by Bell-Roberts Publishing, South Africa, Revue Noire,<br />

Paris, France, Flash <strong>Art</strong>, New York, USA, Frieze, London, UK, <strong>Art</strong> News, USA, <strong>Art</strong> Monthly,<br />

London, UK, <strong>Art</strong> Forum, New York, USA, Asian <strong>Art</strong> News.<br />

Various television and radio interviews both locally and international.<br />

// CURRENT EVENTS //<br />

A R T F A I R S 2 0 1 3 : London <strong>Art</strong> 13, Dubai <strong>Art</strong> Fair, Sydney <strong>Art</strong> Fair, Johannesburg <strong>Art</strong> Fair.<br />

G R O U P S H O W S 2 0 1 3<br />

June <strong>2013</strong> : ”My Joburg”, Fondation Maison Rouge.<br />

Several local group shows in South Africa.<br />

P U B L I C A T I O N S<br />

1.Featured in“Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the <strong>Art</strong>s of Africa»,<br />

Smithonian Museum, <strong>2013</strong>.<br />

2. Featured in «<strong>Art</strong> at the end of apartheid» by John Peffer, University of Minnesota Press.<br />

3. «<strong>Art</strong> in South Africa» by Sue W illiamson an Ashraf Jamal.<br />

4. ’Super Boring’ catalogue, Standard Bank retrospective.<br />

5. <strong>Art</strong>ist’s Monograph, <strong>Wayne</strong> <strong>Barker</strong>.


His work is reminiscent of both the embattled emotional past and the present<br />

in South Africa. However, his work is never gloomy or negative. His<br />

strong emotional lifestyle is infused on canvas.<br />

JOHANN KRITZINGER<br />

27 FEBRUARY 2010, JOHANNESBURG<br />

WHERE IS IT ?<br />

<strong>Wayne</strong> enthusiastic reprobate friendly persistent good looking happy sad sensitive<br />

rough tough father rich poor good bad drunk sober hard working lazy loving old<br />

young fun sex art politics passionate shoes colourful money powder vomit friend<br />

flamboyant painting drawing jacket hat computers objects galleries music drink paintings<br />

women clean dirty sleep awake gallerist book.<br />

BAREND DE WET, 2010, CAPE TOWN<br />

«HATS OFF TO THE JOKER IN SOUTH<br />

AFRICA’S CULTURAL PACK»

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!