Wayne Barker was born in 1963 in Pretoria, South Africa. Barker lives and works in Johannesburg. Barker’s art attempts to reinvent place through time; some imagined grotesque worlds of their own invention, or explore the way place is often a creation of the mind. Others investigate the deep marks that myth and history can leave on the land, or consider how place can be used as a form of political control. Barker states “I am interested in how the media, through popular images, inform, confuse and rape the African continent. For the past two decades, since 1987, I have also been dealing with land, which is quite trendy now. My approach has been to deconstruct the icons of South African painting, particularly works by Pierneef.”

Barker’s art is as much the deconstruction, the ‘wearing out’ of obsolete cultural icons, as it is about the reconstruction, the restitution of the landscape. He has exhibited at the Contemporary African Art Fair, Somerset House, London, Pioneer works, New York and Somerset House, London, 2015, Contemporary African Art Fair, Somerset House, London, 2014 and Contemporary African Art Fair, Somerset House, London, 2013.

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