Strauss & co - 16 February 2019, Cape Town

31 17 Wayne Barker SOUTH AFRICAN 1963– Liberty inscribed ‘Beader: Qubeka’ and with the artist’s name, title and medium on an Everard Read Gallery label adhered to the reverse strung glass beads laid down on panel 120 by 100 cm R150 000 – 200 000 EXHIBITED Everard Read, Johannesburg, and CIRCA, Cape Town, The World That Changed the Image, 3 to 29 February 2016. ITEM NOTES ‘The process of making Barker’s beaded works is itself a complex one. Barker begins by photograph- ing female models in his studio. Recently his models have largely been women from other African countries, many – if not all – of whom are refugees from their countries of origin. The second stage of the work involves constructing a painting from the original photograph; this painting is then deconstructed using computer generated marks and images. The mechanical art of taking a photograph is trans- formed through the artisanal craft of the painting, and then again transformed into a machine printed image. This image becomes the template for the beading.This tem- plate is then taken to the beaders’ studio – a triple volume building in downtown Cape Town close to Barker’s studio in Observatory, where there is a hive of creative energy. They painstakingly glue strung glass beads onto each work taking several months to fully complete the patterns’. 1 1. Carol Brown. (2010) ‘Threading Through History’ , in Wayne Barker: Super Boring, Stellenbosch: SMAC.