FEATURE Jan 2025 ‘Barbara Walker: Being Here’ at The Whitworth

The Art of Perception: Reframing Narratives

Marjorie H Morgan

Writer Marjorie H Morgan reviews the visually and emotionally powerful ‘Barbara Walker: Being Here’ at The Whitworth, Manchester, drawing on her own and Barbara Walker’s lived experience to describe what is ‘effectively a personal and a community autobiography in art’. The exhibition, which brings together works that span Walker’s career, also features a brand new iteration of her Turner Prize nominated portrait series, Burden of Proof, in the form of an imposing wall drawing, alongside a room devoted to a new wallpaper commission inspired by The Whitworth’s historic collection. Morgan sensitively guides the reader through this ground breaking exhibition,  revealing how Walker’s deeply researched adaptations of conventional artistic media transform received perceptions and preconceptions of Black British presence, power and belonging.

‘Barbara Walker: Being Here’ at The Whitworth is a major survey exhibition of the work of Barbara Walker MBE, RA, one of Britain’s leading contemporary portrait artists, who began her practice in the 1990s. Curated by Poppy Bowers and Hannah Vollam, the retrospective includes over 70 works selected from the six major series that Walker has accomplished to date: Private Face (1998-2005), Louder Than Words (2006-09), Show and Tell (2008-15), Shock and Awe (2015-20), Vanishing Point (2018-ongoing) and Burden of Proof (2022-23).

‘Being Here’ consists of several large scale paintings and drawings, a video installation, and two location specific works: one from the Burden of Proof series, and the newly commissioned work that artistically uses the medium of wallpaper: Soft Power (2024).

This selection of works addresses historical and contemporary cultural and political themes, viewed through personal and intimate narratives, and is set out in a way the artist intended it to be experienced as indicated in the name of the exhibition: ‘Barbara Walker: Being Here’, effectively a personal and a community autobiography in art that uncovers and publicises details of the presence of the artist, and people who look like her, in British history and culture.

Walker reflects that it was a challenging and deeply reflective task to select the specific works for ‘Being Here’. She was assisted by curators Poppy Bowers and Hannah Vollam, as together they selected works for inclusion in the exhibition that suggested a desire to further stimulate thought and discussion at the intersection of domestic as well as global communities and politics.

Walker began creating public art in the 1990s, her practice has been directly shaped by her interest in the cultural and political realities of divisions that occur because of the specific issues of identity and representation, class and power, belonging, gender and racial categorisations - all of which she witnessed and experienced as she grew up in Birmingham.

Ever since Walker’s first venture into visual art she has also fine-tuned her skill as a social historian and an excavator of hidden histories.

Initially drawn to the practice of portraiture, Walker created images that reflected the reality of life in the Birmingham Caribbean communities. Two of these paintings, The Sitter, and Boundary II  from the Private Face series, are complementary to each other, while physically opposite in their setting within The Whitworth show.

The Sitter (2002), is a brightly coloured oil on canvas painting of a young, possibly teenage school child, sitting on the floor in front of a woman dressed in red. The child looks lost in personal reflections as she nestles against the sofa between the woman’s spread legs. It is almost a natal scene in its intimacy. The woman’s face unseen, she is sat on a cream coloured sofa while she is busy plaiting the child’s hair. The setting is a quiet, relaxed home environment and is diametrically opposed the public persona of Black women as loud and aggressive.

I have been in the position of The Sitter, I have been the person behind The Sitter. The intimate practice of hair care from an elder to one of the younger generation is a familiar one for people of the African diaspora. This image, like many others in Barbara Walker’s collection, is personal yet it is also global. Audiences can situate themselves and their family members in the image. What was once a private, maybe a quiet hidden aspect, of community life, is celebrated in this portrait as a connecting and reinforcing of historical ways of being together. These large scale works proclaim the existence and presence of a community of people, often shown in vulnerable, unguarded, poses. They are the point of view of someone within the community, someone trusted to accurately document the reality of the individual lives encountered in the safe spaces.

Barbara Walker’s art is contemporary storytelling linked to both historical and modern situations. The images that Walker creates, using figurative paintings and drawings, can be universally interpreted by the audience who are invited to reflect on the humanity of both themselves and the subjects depicted.

Similarly, Boundary II (2002) portrays a group of Black men in a barbershop. This oil on canvas painting uses muted colours to show a social interaction of  intimacy and respect between a number of barbers and their individual clients. The proximity of the men in this public space conveys a sense of affection, mutual positive regard and ultimate trust between the grouped subjects. This scene, like the domestic setting of an adult woman and child in The Sitter - in this particular case of the artist and her niece Zipporah - is how Walker seeks to rebalance the portrayals of Black men in the media as violent and inherently dangerous. Walker used this series, Private Face (1998-2005), as a chronicle of the lives and culture of the African-Caribbean community she lived in at the time in her hometown of Birmingham.

The artist comments that, “Works like The Sitter and Burden of Proof profoundly intertwine personal narrative and collective history. They reflect not only individual experiences but also larger cultural and societal contexts. The Sitter's subjects are more than their own stories; they're vessels of collective memory and identity. As their lives echo broader themes of race, belonging, and representation, their personal narratives resonate within the framework of historical experiences shared by many.”

While Walker’s practice originally focused on portraiture, in this latest exhibition the artist has chosen works that show how she expanded her repertoire to include wall drawings, a video installation, and Soft Power, a newly commissioned printed wallpaper.

The use of multiple materials and techniques elevate the potential for storytelling and cultural expression of the individual pieces created, and those existing works selected for this installation. I was curious to know from the artist just how integral is the medium and subject used in the process of making what was once invisible visible, and how Walker’s work has changed the genre of portraiture.

For this exhibition Walker has recreated a charcoal portrait drawing  of four people of British Caribbean heritage from her Burden of Proof series (2022-2023) on The Whitworth gallery walls. Walker will erase this Windrush Scandal floor-to-ceiling artwork at the end of the exhibition. On the surrounding walls, Burden of Proof displays the portraits of six people who were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants drawn onto copies of the official documents that challenged their status as British citizens - the combination of these two elements highlights the way in which these historic and politically unjust factors are now intrinsically linked as a part of the individual’s identity and precarious situation within their lives and homes in Britain.

Burden of Proof (2022-2023), a body of work focused on six individuals personally impacted by the ongoing Windrush Scandal, was nominated for the 2023 Turner Prize.

These artistic creations are Walker’s personally crafted interpretation of the society she exists in, in an attempt to challenge thoughts and assumptions and provoke discussions. Walker’s work continues to bring attention to marginalised voices as she highlights systemic inequities and historical erasures. Walker further explains that, “Burden of Proof also explores identity through the lens of collective histories. This work amplifies personal narratives through societal struggles, such as systemic injustice and the quest for recognition. The interplay between the individual and the collective becomes a powerful commentary on marginalised communities’ challenges and identity formation… I am intricately woven into these collective histories. This creates a dialogue that invites viewers to engage with identity complexities by reflecting on individual experiences and shared legacies.”

Walker’s use of large scale drawings as completed works of art, and the use of techniques such as embossing are other examples of venture by the artist into new ways of making portraits.

Parade III (2017) is a graphite on embossed paper portrait of three female figures in military uniform. The two figures of African Caribbean women rendered in graphite are delicately and finely drawn, while the embossed figure is visual as mainly an absence, an outline of a person of apparent Caucasian background bur devoid of any fine details or individual identifying marks.

This rendering by Walker is a reversal of the reality of many African-Caribbean men and women who served in the British armed forces but were effectively erased from the public records. The role reversal now makes what was once invisible visible, and what was prominently visible before is just an outline of possible humanity.

Walker states that, “Embossing’s marginalisation in the art world is particularly intriguing, especially when considering its potential to convey depth and texture. When applied to the representation of Black subjects, this technique can challenge established hierarchies by making the invisible visible, creating a tangible experience that emphasises the complexity of identity and history.”

The artist further suggests that embossing in relation to portraiture, especially in relation to Black subjects, can invite and highlight a re-evaluation of the narrative surrounding value in art. It is Walker’s contention that by employing a medium often dismissed, artists can subvert expectations when choosing to use embossing as it can become a powerful tool for storytelling and cultural expression. Walker views this as an act of reclaiming and redefining materials that inevitably invites deeper conversations about race, identity, and the ways in which society assigns value to different forms of artistic expression.

Parade III (2017), from the Shock and Awe series (2015-2020), is an example of Walker's finished works that are monuments of the evidence of exploration into the archives, meticulous gathering of oral histories and the process of weaving them together with personal narratives to reveal the suppressed or forgotten stories. In Shock and Awe, Walker addresses the overlooked role of both male and female African Caribbean Black British soldiers by foregrounding these previously neglected service personnel, and providing a basic outline of the white soldiers these now highlighted people served alongside.

Walker has created work that has both transformed and disrupted the canon. She comments that: 

Walker’s art catalogue highlights the isolation and marginalisation of British Black people in British society.

Through her art works Walker makes space for stories that have been obscured and mainly untold; embedded in each work Walker has a continuous thread of storytelling that engages the audiences both emotionally and intellectually as they are encouraged to question the dominant and overriding cultural narratives and view familiar subjects in a new light.

Walker’s work continues to shine a floodlight on social, cultural and political history as she persists in revealing hidden facts, and thereby gives them new life in contemporary contexts. This timely exhibition is an accessible entry point for public engagement, especially for those with complex histories. Walker’s art is also a challenge to official narratives, while simultaneously creating and preserving community memories.

For a number of decades Walker has been an ever present reporter on the social fabric of society. She continues to makes the invisible visible, and vice versa - thus highlighting the actual and implied absence of bodies in the canon. This captivating exhibition shows Barbara Walker’s commitment for over 30 years to promote art as a tool for change in society as she continues to reframe narratives.

This survey exhibition is recognising that Walker’s art is a means whereby her excavation and revelation work helps to shape how society views and understand the truths of history and contemporary society through a creative perspective. Her work encourages constant examination of how historical narratives are constructed, and by whom. Walker’s work contributes to a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding about the past and present in British society.

Walker’s wallpaper commission, which evolved into Soft Power, was created with the aim of having an element that would anchor the exhibition within the gallery space. For Walker this project represented a new venture that extended her  interest in working on walls into the wallpaper medium. By using familiar patterns and imagery - which the artist augmented with subtle interventions—such as portraits, urban scenes, and rural landscapes, Soft Power has become a work that is both decorative and deeply symbolic. Soft Power is also a continuing thread of Walker’s work with representing the Windrush generation in art as she has in Burden of Proof (2022-23).

Soft Power is created using a colonial-era oriental blue colour, and this wallpaper focuses on delicately rendered portraits of six first- and second-generation people from the Manchester Windrush community; the individuals are here juxtaposed alongside blossoming flowers and foliage.

This commissioned work enables the installation to feel more immersive, transforming it into a lived experience rather than just a visual one, and thereby fostering a dialogue between the space, the viewers, and the images themselves.

Every inch of each canvas, wall, material is important because of what it signifies by its presence and absence. The essence of community life is displayed in this exhibition, from initial portraits in the 1990s where Walker is an uninvolved observer, to more recent, direct gaze portraits where the subject may appear either confident or confrontational depending on who the viewer is.

Her curated works in this exhibition invite the visitor to personally connect to the artworks on display with a sense of contemplation, analysis, and reflection.

With the inclusion of over 70 works, this survey exhibition has a wide range of subject matter for the visitor to consider. The pieces gathered here are a part of Walker’s personal testimony to being present, in this place, at this time.

‘Barbara Walker: Being Here’ is at The Whitworth, Manchester from 4 October 2024 - 26 January 2025, from there it will tour to Arnolfini, Bristol 7 March 2025 – 25 May 2025.