For over twenty-five years, Barbara Walker’s compelling figurative paintings and drawings have transformed perceptions of Black presence, power and belonging in Britain. [Taking place at the Whitworth, University of Manchester] Being Here is the first survey exhibition of her celebrated career, bringing together key works from the 1990s to today, from early paintings of everyday life in Birmingham in Private Face (1998.2002), to her Turner Prize nominated series Burden of Proof (2022) and newly commissioned wallpaper Soft Power (2024).

Published to accompany the exhibition, this book features reproductions of over 70 artworks, and new essays on Walker’s powerfully empathetic, research-driven practice by Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, Eddie Chambers, Alice Correia, Leanne Green, Rianna Jade Parker and the exhibition curators Poppy Bowers and Hannah Vollam.

The text by Eddie Chambers is "The Maturing and Maturity of Barbara Walker". Extracts as follows:

…The final instance of Walker’s engagement with community that I’d like to make mention of is the profound series she undertook for her Turner Prize nomination. If I was premature in my suggestion that those who Walker depicted in her earliest body of exhibited work were ‘ordinary people, going about their day-to-day business’, I was certainly premature in regarding the community elders (who were a distinct element of her early paintings) as having made settled lives for themselves in the United Kingdom. In paintings such as the one depicting two Caribbean-born matriarchs, Walker’s respect for the seniors in her community is an almost tactile element. But what the media dubbed the ‘Windrush scandal’ disabused a great many of us, me included, of the idea that our elders had, after a lifetime of toil, earned the right to see out their days in dignity.

Walker’s moving and dramatic intervention saw her rendering imposing portraits, directly on to the walls of the gallery, of five elders caught up in the Windrush scandal. Another element of the exhibition saw Walker undertake relatively smaller portraits of these individuals. These were all moving portraits, in which the dignity of these seniors (sorely abused and disrespected by the Home Office) was the abiding and dominant feature of the installation, which Walker named Burden of Proof. In referencing Louder Than Words, I made mention of the bureaucratic chits foisted on luckless people who were stopped and searched. But in Burden of Proof, supposedly inconsequential scraps of paper became evidence of British citizenship. Among the portraits Walker undertook of Windrush generation elders were those rendered on enlarged items such as a motor vehicle repair receipt, in a technique reminiscent of the enlarged stop and search receipts not yet discarded by Walker’s son Solomon. For those elders on whom fell the burden of proof, certain letters, receipts etc. (not always consciously kept) became invaluable evidence of residency or prolonged presence in the United Kingdom. Cynically perhaps, we might reflect that such pieces of paper carried a value that infinitely exceeded the value with which their status as British citizens was regarded. Burden of Proof represented a breathtaking manifestation of quiet outrage and pronounced empathy on Walker’s part.

Over the course of the past decade or so, Walker has come to be known for her habit, come the exhibition’s end, of literally washing away her oversize, imposing charcoal drawings of Black people, rendered directly on to the walls of those galleries privileged enough to exhibit her work. Knowing that poignant and emotive erasure would be the fate of these monumental drawings seems to underline or reinscribe the state’s attempts to erase the legal and citizenship rights of such Caribbean-born seniors. When I visited Burden of Proof, a random gentleman approached me, and in a voice that betrayed disbelief, incredulity and not a little emotion, asked me if it was true that the portraits would be washed away when the Turner Prize exhibition closed. Clearly, he had heard that this was to be the fate of these beautifully rendered portraits and perhaps sought to be disabused of such a horrific prospect. I have no idea if the five elders lovingly and sensitively rendered by Walker got to see the exhibition, but my sense of unknowing is, in part, created by what I imagine to be the sense of unknowing and uncertainty experienced by those poor souls caught up in the Windrush scandal itself.

I’d like, albeit briefly, to make mention of Birmingham as a context; not only Birmingham, but the wider West Midlands in which Walker continues to live and work. Though her working relationship with the West Midlands’ art establishment has not infrequently been a tricky or exasperating one, there is little doubting the extent to which she has remained grounded in this Brummie context. From her participation in the 2003 group exhibition True Stories (Wolverhampton Art Gallery) to her 2011 three month residency at The New Art Gallery Walsall (which culminated in the production of a series of large scale charcoal portraits that depicted members of the public who visited the gallery, exhibited as Show and Tell), for distinct periods of her career Walker has had a commitment to maintaining a dialogue with both the audiences and communities of Birmingham and the West Midlands. In considering Walker and her hugely engaging practice, this sense of community, with which I began this reflection, remains a cornerstone of her approach to art making.

The above extracts are from "The Maturing and Maturity of Barbara Walker", a text in the catalogue published to accompany the first retrospective exhibition of Barbara Walker's work, held at the Whitworth, Manchester, 4 October 2024 – 26 January 2025. Pages 12 - 22

https://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/upcomingexhibitions/barbarawalker/