Barker spent a year and a half in
Paris, before moving to
Amsterdam, where he lived from 1982 to 1987, supporting himself by working as a scenic painter. In 1986, he debuted his performance piece titled ''Trust a Boat, 'Film-sculpture for a House''' inside a
canal house on the
Keizersgracht. These scenes consisted of a mixture of live performance and film projections set to music. Upon his return to Canada, Barker continued to create installation pieces that incorporated elements of film, video, sculpture and live performance, often exhibited in public places. His work consisted of a flooded tent set up in the middle of a vast pond. Images of Canadian ecological disasters were projected onto the walls of the tent. and was also featured on
TVOntario's two-part series
Exposures: The Art of Film and Video, which aired in 2005. The film features composite images that were made by combining nine frames, all shot in
Super 8 film and arranged into a grid that was then transferred to
35mm film. Barker worked on Egoyan's stage production of
Richard Strauss's opera
Salome, presented by the
Canadian Opera Company in 1996. Barker created elements of projected film and video for the performance. The first of many collaborations with Egoyan, the two met after Egoyan attended one of Barker's shows that was being held in an abandoned building once owned by the
CBC. The work involved a delicate paper house that was suspended over a shallow pool of water and projected on the walls were black-and-white super 8 film images of various people floating on a river. Egoyan said of the experience: "Sometimes it just happens. You see a piece by a new artist and it answers something within you in a direct and powerful way. I had that experience nearly twenty-five years ago when I first came across Phillip's work." Barker was nominated, along with Patricia Cuccia, in the category of Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design at the
18th Genie Awards for their work on the film. He also worked with Egoyan in 1997 on a film featuring cellist
Yo-Yo Ma that aired as the fourth episode of the six-part television film series
Inspired by Bach. as well as with Egoyan on his production of the
chamber opera Elsewhereless by Canadian composer
Rodney Sharman. The following year he released his film
Soul Cages, which features a grid of forty-five Super 8 film frames arranged into one frame of 35mm film—an expansion of the technique that he employed in
A Temporary Arrangement. and, with producer
Simone Urdl, Barker shared a nomination for
Best Live Action Short Film at the
21st Genie Awards. The 2000s saw further collaborations between Barker and Egoyan. Barker was the production designer for the films
Ararat (2002),
Where the Truth Lies (2005),
Adoration (2008) and
Chloe (2009). Barker received Genie award nominations for his work on
Ararat His work on the sets for the film were featured in an issue of
Canadian Interiors magazine that same year. Barker built a 3,000-square-foot
presidential suite at London's
Shepperton Studios, inspired by the architecture and design of
Morris Lapidus during his
MiMo period, for the film. In 2013
Malody received the
Prix Créativité (creativity prize) at the
Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal, in addition to the
Le prix Hors Pistes (the "off-track" or "off-road" prize) at the Festival Hors Pistes held at the
Centre Pompidou in Paris. Barker served as production designer for the television series
Reign from 2013 to 2015, as well as on the 2016
CBS series
American Gothic. He was nominated, along with Robert Hepburn and Brad Milburn, for Best Production Design or Art Direction in a Fiction Program or Series for his work on
Reign at the 2016
Canadian Screen Awards. In the film, a fisherman teaches his son about the use of the "shadow nette", a traditional fishing device worn by the fisherman that projects their silhouette on to a screen. It was also featured on the CBC series '
Canadian Reflections. Also in 2019, Barker and fellow filmmaker
Mike Hoolboom, launched a tour featuring a retrospective of Barker's films, titled
Strange Machines: The Films of Phillip Barker. The tour also featured the release of a book by the same title that was edited by Hoolbloom. the
Canadian Film Institute, Barker also sat on a panel of production designers at the
2019 Toronto International Film Festival, alongside
François Audouy (
The Wolverine,
Logan,
Ford v Ferrari), Craig Lathrop (
The Lighthouse,
The Witch), and Zosia Mackenzie (
Castle in the Ground.) In 2020, Barker served as production designer in the
third season of
Star Trek: Discovery. He was suggested to the show's executive producer,
Alex Kurtzman, who had seen some of Barker's experimental films. ==Filmography==