In 2006, Barker received a Directors Guild of Canada Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production Design for his work on Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies.
Barker's production design has also been featured in films by directors such as Brian De Palma, Mira Nair, Lisa Cholodenko and Neil LaBute, as well as on the television series Reign (2013–2015), American Gothic (2016) and Star Trek: Discovery (2020).
[4] 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.
[11][12] 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.
[20] 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.
[22] 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.
[22] In 1998 Barker worked with director Mira Nair on the TV film rendition of the novel My Own Country,[24] as well as with Egoyan on his production of the chamber opera Elsewhereless by Canadian composer Rodney Sharman.
[22] Barker also released his short film I am always connected, which used repurposed footage from an installation piece that he made for the Lumen Travo gallery in Amsterdam in 1984.
[33] 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.
[34] In 2013 Malody received the Prix Créativité (creativity prize) at the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal,[35] 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.
[38] 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.
His work on the film earned him a nomination for Achievement in Art Direction / Production Design at the 2021 Canadian Screen Awards.
[44] 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.