Many of Barker’s early 1970s preoccupation with Classical sculpture came about during a trip to the Paris Louvre. Some of his Classical pieces are also testimony to his love of Surrealism. Barker had met Man Ray at the Hanover Gallery in 1969 and admired Man Ray's disguising of the familiar. In Chariot, Barker uses the the classical winged Spirit of Extacy, symbol of exclusivity, in the unusual context of a cheap popular roller skate. This contrast is unsettling as the meaning of the familiar is manipulated.

Barker’s 1960’s and 1970's works celebrated the instant possibilities and freedoms of a transformed society, embodied in chrome-plated bronze casts of the everyday, the banal or kitsch elements of our culture, often through the use of irony. Barker's choice of materials and their finishes was largely determined by his experience of working with leather and chrome at the Vauxhall Car factory during 1960-61.

A large retropsective of Barker's work dating 1961-1981 is being hosted by the Wolverhampton Art Gallery as of October 2017.