SUPER BORING - Wayne Barker

SUPER BORING
Wayne Barker has always situated himself in an ambivalent position to the established
art world. On one hand the ultimate art insider, knowing ‘everyone who’s anyone’ and
comfortably chatting to the superstars in Harry’s Bar during the vernissage of the Venice
Biennale, on the other frequently resisting gallery representation and quarrelling
with established art institutions.
‘Super Boring’ can be interpreted as a critique on a
South African art culture that sees collector-investors prepared
to spend millions on an Irma Stern or Maggie Laubser
(or even a Tretchikoff) artwork but which shies away
from buying young or even ‘mid-career’ artists’ work at a
fraction of the price. ‘Why the difference?’ he seems to ask,
‘What makes their decades-old work so desirable while
contemporary production is not?’ Could it be in the eye of
the beholder? Or in their wallet and balanced portfolios? If
it’s in the eye then the fact that he has painted upon copies
of the recent auction record breakers, rendered in oils
as they would be seen by someone with colour-blindness
would see them, may give us a clue to his intentions.
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WAYNE BARKER
Each of these ‘masterpieces’ has been augmented
by his own painterly marks and branded in his signature
neon with the phrase ‘super boring’. Given Barker’s love
for South African art history and his profound respect for
artists of the past 1 it seems unlikely that he is applying this
epithet to the works themselves so much as to the people
and institutions that keep their prices and resultant ‘value’
at so far a remove from what is being produced today.
1 For example he co-curated (with Dr. Fred Scott)
Modern and Contemporary Art: Then Now and Beyond in
2008 at Polokwane Art Museum. The exhibition featured 41
‘old masters’ (including Maggie Laubser and J.H. Pierneef)
alongside 26 contemporary artists.
Colour Country | 2010 | mixed media and neon tubing on canvas | 122.5 x 107 cm
SUPER BORING
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