Barbara Walker, ‘Being Here’ at The Whitworth.

A collection of work spanning more than three decades, Barbara Walker’s ‘Being Here’ arrives as a striking anthology of the artist’s work, tracing her developing ruminations on Black identity, belonging and being.

Barbara Walker Being Here exhibition, the Whitworth in Manchester (2024) © the Whitworth. Photographed by Michael Pollard.

Consisting of over 70 pieces and in formats ranging from charcoal sketches to a specially commissioned wallpaper, the exhibition features some of Walker’s most esteemed bodies of work including Louder than Words (2006-09), Vanishing Point (2018-present), Marking the Moment (2021-present), Private Face (1998-2002) and her Turner-nominated Burden of Proof (2022-23). Perception is a notably overarching theme in the collection. Through her choice of subjects, materials, and techniques, Walker tactfully illustrates how what we are shown drastically affects what we see. Emphasising the damage that unjust depictions inflict on the Black community, her work seeks to provide a remedying alternative.

Combating this injustice of representation, the featured series Shock and Awe restores visibility to sidelined and forgotten figures of the war effort, allowing them to occupy space in their own history. Using a technique of blank embossing, Walker alters where our attention is focused. Embossing certain figures into the paper, present but not as dominant, she uses soft pencil sketching to gently draw out those in the background, bringing these figures and their stories to the forefront. Through a mastery of technique, these works are a powerful display of how subtle choices can vastly alter a narrative. Her series Vanishing Point and Marking the Moment also work to address this imbalance of representation, using delicate tonal work and striking moments of colour to highlight the under-acknowledged presence of Black figures in the European artistic canon.

Barbara Walker, ‘Vanishing Point 3 (Van den Eeckhout)’, 2018, Graphite and coloured pencil on embossed Somerset Satin paper, 62.5 x 80.0 cm.

With similar sensitivity, Walker tackles modern problems, approaching the issue of perception in relation to the assumption of guilt based on appearance. Motivated by her son’s encounters with discriminatory stop and search protocols, her series Louder Than Words utilises materials as canvases on which to present tender depictions of people and areas of her home city of Birmingham. Sketching on newspaper clippings and digital scans of police documents issued to her son following being stopped and searched, Walker combats one narrative with another, overlaying her perspective against a backdrop which encapsulates societal prejudice and the systematic profiling of black men.

Barbara Walker, ‘The Sitter’, 2002, oil on canvas, 182 x 122cm.

Contrasting the monochromatic works shown later, the exhibition opens with vibrant pieces from Walker’s series Private Face (1998-2002). Introducing visitors to her perspective, we observe quiet moments of domesticity captured in rich, deep colour. Undisturbed by the objectifying, intrusive, or prejudiced gaze that burdens the subjects in Walker’s other explorations, these scenes carry an air of ease and warmth, emanating from a definitive sense of familiarity. The title of the series perhaps alludes to the methods of social masking such as code-switching which many Black people feel the pressure to develop to navigate a biased and predominantly white society. Tenderly lifting this mask, Private Face allows viewers a glimpse into unguarded moments of intimacy where cultural ritual delivers comfort. This series stands as notably different to the others in the exhibition, in both its brilliant colour and its domestic setting. The contrasting effect highlights how vastly different an inside perspective can be, reiterating the importance of considering who is entrusted to produce representations of specific groups. As the first series that visitors encounter, it sets the tone for Walker’s mission to reclaim authority on the Black narrative that is to follow.

As a collection, ‘Being Here’ delivers a comprehensive insight into Walker’s dominant themes allowing visitors to draw connections between her bodies of work. What emerges is a richly layered consideration of representations of black identity throughout history, illustrated in her ongoing reflections on what it means to be present and to be seen.

Barbara Walker Being Here exhibition, the Whitworth in Manchester (2024) © the Whitworth. Photographed by Michael Pollard.

In this exhibition, Walker’s challenge and examination of dominant narratives continue beyond the boundaries of her work. Forming a public engagement programme through The Whitworth, ‘Being Here’ is the first-ever major survey exhibition by a British artist, working to continue these explorations both through inspiring further creative discourse and by engaging with visitors to uncover their stories and lived experiences. Running alongside this exhibition are two open calls to local artists. The first seeks to commission a young artist, age 18-30, who has had lived experience of the ‘stop and search’ process, to respond to Walker’s work Louder Than Words (2006-09). The second, open to artists age 50+, seeks to commission an artist with lived or secondary experiences related to the Windrush to work alongside the exhibition programme, building upon the themes presented by Walker’s series Burden of Proof (2022-23). In addition to this, Whitworth is working to organise focus groups of the same age ranges, relating to the same experiences to facilitate the sharing of lived experiences and perspectives and enhance community building. Through this initiative, Walker and her work continues to encourage reflection on the themes of experience and identity, uncovering the narratives of those listened to.

‘Being Here’ by Barbara Walker is showing at The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester from Friday 4 October 2024 – Sunday 26 January 2025 and is free to access.

If you are based in Manchester and are interested in responding to the engagement project’s call for artists or focus group participants, more information can be found at https://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/events/barbarawalkerengagementproject/ 

By Liliana Muñoz Flannery