Forty years after emerging as a fashionable Pop Art sculptor on the 1960s London art scene, Clive Barker continues to surprise with works defined by youthful freshness, originality, immediacy, glamour and humour in which he has retained his commitment to the Pop movement.
Trained as a painter, Barker explored the concept of making art as consumer goods whilst working on the assembly line at Vauxhall Motors 1960-61. The implications of this realisation were profound for his work. Although Barker never pursued mass production as such, he did practise the production technique of divided labour throughout his career. Specialist craftsmanship is shown in the perfection of the casting, cutting, polishing and assembling of his works.
As his key theme, Barker chose the transformation of commonplace objects by casting them in metal in order to make a connection between art and the post-war world of consumerism.
