By replicating functional, mass-produced objects in gleaming metals, Barker has redefined Marcel Duchamp's concept of the 'ready-made'. His recreations of the ordinary awaken a sense of amazement at the beauty of the familiar, reinventing the surrounding world, giving his art a life-enhancing quality. His metal casts of 'ready-mades' predate the 1980s work of Jeff Koons. With 'Brains' Barker does not contemplate death as he did in his series of skulls dating 1974, but reinvents the classical 'memento mori' in an object that looks surprisingly alive. The very mass from where life is controlled presented in gleaming cast bronze questions our fragility in time when medicine and science have entered experimental research.

Clive Barker's work is in museum collections worldwide including: Tate, London; British Museum, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; Staedtische Kunsthalle Mannheim; Museum fuer Modern Kunst, Frankfurt; National Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Museu Coleção Berardo, Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Lisbon; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.