Being Here 

at The Whitworth, Manchester 

4 October 2024 - 26 January 2025 

In 2023 Barbara Walker was both nominated for the Turner Prize and elected to the Royal Academy. This year she will have her first major survey at the Whitworth in Manchester. Although active for decades, having finally 'arrived' in the public eye at the age of 60 she is definitely an artist you should know. Her work reminds us that, although not the be-all and end-all of contemporary artistic practice, the traditional skills of draughtsmanship and naturalistic painting are alive and well. However, the technical facility and mimetic brilliance are not means to show off, but to communicate: Walker is an artist who is profoundly engaged in contemporary life, and how the lived experience of so many is rooted in the past, using her work to make visible what has previously been unjustly overlooked.

 

Much of her work is monochrome, ranging from delicate graphite sketches on paper to powerful, large-scale wall-drawings in charcoal. However, colour is often employed for a very specific purpose, its presence denoting absence: black and white, and the visibility of colour in purely artistic terms being used as metaphors for their equivalents in terms of race, both historically and in the present day.

 

More than 'one to look out for', Barbara Walker is undoubtedly a vital part of the contemporary art scene, and an artist whose work you will be able to enjoy on a number of levels, from the purely visual to the profoundly perceptive.