WAYNE BARKER, ARTIST’S MONOGRAPH

All Washed Up in Africa would play itself out in various
contexts in the two years leading to Barker's 2000
retrospective at the Johannesburg Art Gallery - the same
gallery that he had visited to copy the Pierneefs and that
now houses his work in its permanent collection.
All Washed Up in Africa was the title of his second
solo at the Frankfurt Hanel in 1997, and of a beautifully
crafted Pretoria exhibition at the Millennium Gallery with
Ian Waldek in 1999. His contribution to the 1998
Angolan/South African exchange Memorias Intimas
Marcas was another version of Nantes, drawing on both
personal and political histories.
There was a wax room with the washing line projection,
debris, blood, a waterfall and photographs of himself and
his brother playing on the beach during the time of the
Angolan war.
There was also "an army room" and again Barker drew
on his role as a public art agent. He put out an appeal for
donations of old South African army uniforms so that he
could offer them to Angola as an apology for the pain caused
by the country's involvement in the war. Thousands arrived.
By now, though, the populist side of Barker's work and
personality was about more than just offering the artist up
as a public facilitator. When combined with his ironic jester
act, he was starting to create a fairly significant breed of
performance art.
Visiting the 1998 Venice Biennale with Waldek, for
example, the artists were outraged to learn that not a