ry Barker In the Shadow of the Hand / Selected Works Western World/ Chapeltown Theatre/ The Mower/ Dancing/ Fruits & Vegetables/ Box of Desires/ Prints/ www.garrybarkeronline.com
01. Western world. Garry Barker
A set of 50 cards. These cards are a meditation on Western values. Partly a response to a growing awareness of my own fast disappearing memories of childhood and partly a recognition that George Bush is of the same generation as myself. I suspect his long standing immersion in the Western myth has shaped his unconscious. It has probably shaped mine too, but I was never given access to weapons of such destruction.
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02. Chapeltown Theatre. Garry Barker
Images drawn in response to living in the Chapeltown area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. A place of many cultures, it hosts a carnival every year and has an undeserved reputation for violence and drugs. It is in fact a place of many poets, musicians and artists and is a one of those locations of culture lost within the urban sprawl of many inner cities. These images are more to do with possibilities of carnival within the European tradition and are not illustrations of how it is. Most importantly carnival was a day when the world order could be turned upon its head.
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03. The Mower. Garry Barker
These images of mowers are usually exhibited as a block of rectangles, each time they are displayed a new formation is used, each formation suggested by a different possible narrative.
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04. Dancing. Garry Barker
The start of an ongoing rumination on our relationship with other animals. We are prepared to eat them so why not dance with them too?
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05. Fruits & Vegetables. Garry Barker
We are what we eat. The closest relationship of all is that with the food we eat; it becomes us. These images are part of an ongoing series of responses to the fruit and vegetables bought from my local shops in Leeds. The fact that many of them are ‘not from around here’ reflects current global issues of not only environmental concerns over distribution networks but also the fact that every city is a home for multicultural communities and food is one of the ways that these communities can maintain their own cultural identities. Some of these images are direct observational drawings of fruit and vegetables before they are cut up, cooked and eaten. They represent the fact that I can give no better honorific value to these wonderful things than by simply looking at them long enough to draw them. The other images are what dreams are made of if you spend too much time drawing fruit and vegetables.
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06. Box of Desires. Garry Barker
These drawings were an attempt to work through a series of images that have been drifting through my sub-conscious for a while. The relationship between writing and talking, touching and tasting, the spiritual and the sexual all somehow coming together in images of books and tongues.
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07. Prints. Garry Barker
Images drawn in response to living in the Chapeltown area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. A place of many cultures, it hosts a carnival every year and has an undeserved reputation for violence and drugs. It is in fact a place of many poets, musicians and artists and is a one of those locations of culture lost within the urban sprawl of many inner cities. These images are more to do with possibilities of carnival within the European tradition and are not illustrations of how it is. Most importantly carnival was a day when the world order could be turned upon its head.
09
Garr