WAYNE BARKER, ARTIST’S MONOGRAPH

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Back in Johannesburg it seemed the Biennale was going ahead without the new generation of local artists. Although a Zulu Lulu was featured on the Spanish pavilion, Barker felt that the local selection simply did not reflect what was happening. It was the same old problem, but this time he didn't do blackface or hurl tennis balls at the organisers. He decided instead to claim a piece of the Biennale precinct and curate his own show. At a stage in contemporary South African art characterised by infighting - mutterings and fists flew in the build up to Africus; artists clashed with local government, curators clashed with bureaucrats and the press clashed along after them - Barker was perfectly poised to bring together his contemporaries. The Laager - a circular art encampment created out of 14 12-meter shipping containers - would come to be regarded
as the gem of the Biennale and much praise would be bestowed on Barker's curatorial instincts. Writing about the 1995 Africus Biennale in an edition of Modern Painters, David Bowie discussed The Laager as "a symbol of nationalist isolation", suggesting that the irony of the show was that it exposed Africus itself to be a bit of a laager. "What it does for me personally," he wrote, "is present the work of a bunch of wildly talented, young, mostly white artists dealing with the South African Thing... Wayne Barker, curator of this fringe event offers a deconstruction of the history of image in South Africa from 1930 to the present... " The United Nations agreed with the pop star and offered backing for the show to be taken to Chile as a cultural exchange. What remains startling about The Laager is how in both its content and its presentation - a shipping container per artist - it pre-empted the 1997 Africus Biennale, which addressed issues of cultural identity around the theme of Trade Routes. Barker was about to set sail on a voyage of discovery across the seas. First, though, there was South Africa's own colonial history to reconsider.
Page 2: To my wife to be, Claire; my two da
Page 5 and 6: 4. Introduction 7. Vienna Calling 9
Page 7 and 8: part of the making process. One has
Page 9 and 10: 7 "There's a strong flying story go
Page 11: In 1963, the year in which Barker w
Page 16 and 17: In his two years at the University
Page 20 and 21: When a lecturer at Michaelis told B
Page 22: Something was up in Johannesburg's
Page 26 and 27: 24 In 1989, Nelson Mandela was stil
Page 30: The Johannesburg Art Gallery, a gra
Page 33: On July 4 1990, five months after h
Page 46: In 1990, at the height of the FIG's
Page 55: single African country was represen

WAYNE BARKER, ARTIST’S MONOGRAPH

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?