In 1989, Nelson Mandela was still in prison; P.W. Botha had suffered a stroke and F.W. De Klerk was about to replace him as State President. The first lurid exposes of apartheid hit-squad atrocities were rattling the headlines of the independent press.

Images on Metal
Battering, bruising and abrading pieces of metal until images suggested themselves on the surface like channelled spirits, the artist then pasted ready-made products or painted a series of vivid, colliding images in oils on his dusty downtown canvasses. These canvasses would make up Image on Metal, his first solo show, held at the Market Galleries.

He transformed the gallery space into a closed reality littered with pop signs and scruffy wonders - goldfish circled their bowls on the floor beneath the paintings.

Interspersed with a series of line drawings of black faces - called Victims - symbols of Afrikaner nationalist history looked out, as Powell described it, "from fragments of a murder".

Fragments of a Murder

Wayne Barker: Artist's Monograph
Introduction
Vienna Calling
60's Suburbia
Johnny Rottenism
Anyone for Tennis?
Fourteen Days in Hell
The Bad Art Attacks
The Famous Five do Downtown
Fragments of a Murder
Have you Hugged a Fascist Today?
Landscape with Target
Blood Money
Le Monde a L'envers
Bigotry on a Stick
The Heart of Neon
Divorce in Paradise
The South African Thing
Storming the Ramparts
The Wax Hand
A Love Story
Frankfurt in Latex
The Talking Curio
Back to Basics
Dirty Laundry
A New Kind of Freedom
Biography
Photo Credits & Works