WAYNE BARKER, ARTIST’S MONOGRAPH

When a lecturer at Michaelis told Barker
that what he really needed was to go to the army,
learn some discipline and then go back and
paint, he obviously never knew his student. Or perhaps
knew him all too well. When Barker returned from Cape
Town at the end of 1983 having failed art history, his father
insisted that he would do his bit for the country.
Barker ignored the family pressure and spent that
Christmas in Johannesburg. The decision would shift his
context and redefine the parameters of his work, largely
due to the influence of two people working there at the
time. In Cape Town he had met a young actress and started
helping her and a friend construct the sets for their plays.
The actress was Megan Kruskul, and her friend was Chris
Pretorius. Before leaving the country to pursue international
opportunities, Pretorius and Kruskul would come as close
as anyone ever has to being
underground stars in Johannesburg.
Working with them, Barker acquired
skills that would later add weight and
conviction to his military performance
repertoire.
When critic Brenda Atkinson today
writes about the "ravishing aesthetic
impact" of Barker's work, and of how
he is able to turn "politics into beauty",
the artist should probably, however
briefly, tip his hat in the direction of
South Africa's
alternative theatre
scene. Pretorius, a
writer and designer,
would almost certainly
have instilled in Barker
a sense of textured
space and odd lighting. Kruskul, with whom Barker had
become involved, would act in plays with names like Weird
Sex in Maputo. She was also known to chant sick ditties
and spit political outrage at the singer of a seminal punkish
agit-rock band called Koos. Of the authors she got Barker
to read, he would say in the Vryeweekblad: "In the army
I was three people - Umberto Eco, Carl Jung and Joseph
Heller."
Early in 1984, Barker's call-up papers arrived at his
parents' home. He and Kruskul were devastated, but she
and his mother eventually dropped him off at the military
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