SUPER BORING - Wayne Barker

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WAYNE BARKER
Wayne Barker in Venice | 2009
Arriving again in Venice unoffi cially, offi cially invited, I
realised that living in Africa has a certain charm and a sense
of necessity. The night before I left I watched the history of
the Congo which was an insightful piece of info to arrive
in Europe with, at an art show of international acclaim. I
realized how tired most of the international art can be and
how up its own revisionist arsehole it can be.
We started by looking for the space where our exhibition
was housed. This took an entire day but during the day we
saw all the exhibitions being installed and all the artists
could be spotted a mile away, they had been invited by their
country and were feeling on top of the world. I, coming from
the so-called bottom of the world, started feeling more and
more frustrated, as usual we were doing it for ourselves;
carrying boxes of invites and paintings to our venue, while
our ministers were probably sipping champagne in faulty
palaces around the world unaware of the importance of
Arts and Culture in South Africa and the strength thereof,
let alone the fi nancial spin-offs and oblivious to the cultural
importance to represent the diverse visual art works that
are being produced here in SA today.
The stereotypical views about Africa are rife and many
an artist in South Africa is dealing with this ‘poor cousin’
concept, that we are naïve and the art produced here is
less important on a global level. This by the way is bollocks
because the work produced here is challenging for sure
and often deals with relevant issues globally and locally
with a degree of freshness and brutal honesty.
While dealing with my frustrations and the unbelievable
charm of Venice in usual African style, we realised that
since we had travelled half way across the globe we might
as well make the best of the moment. It was now time to
INTRODUCTION
DEARTH IN VENICE By Wayne Barker
clandestinely give the biggest art collectors our invites and
press release. The sky was full of jets and planes, landing
to bring people to this art extravaganza. The who’s who in
the international art fraternity were descending in private
planes and boats like the sardine run in KwaZulu-Natal.
Our fi rst target was a little hidden bar called Harry’s
Bar where the famous Bellini drink was invented. Walking
in sober was maybe a little ambitious, as sitting with his
entourage was the biggest art collector, Henri Pinault. After
downing two Bellini’s, I muscled my way to his table and
introduced myself and invited the table to our exhibition
called ‘Languages of the World’, he almost didn’t know
where SA is, again I felt the frustration of being an artist in
SA. I left the little bar and consoled myself with my cognac
from my faithful hip-fl ask, looking at the grand canal
glowing in the Venetian light, I was so embarrassed that I
felt like jumping in and swimming home and only making
wooden sculptures from now on! Our second target was
the notorious Bauer Hotel where the artists and patrons
hang out and drink champagne, fl aunting their egos and
arrogance; I suppose that comes with the territory? So we
started meeting people and inviting them to our exhibition.
Two out of ten people would give it more than 5 seconds
attention and the others would throw it back in our faces.
This made me consult my hip fl ask with a vengeance and
I thought to myself; who are these people anyway? We all
on this sinking island together exhibiting our work, with this
newfound freedom and realization I was able to meet some
fun people in the greater Art world, What a pretentious lot.
The next morning I woke up in the Bauer Hotel next to a tall
blonde stranger, a curator and a buyer of contemporary art,
on the fl oor were dresses that looked like they had been
fl own in from Pep stores in Africa.
SUPER BORING
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