Exhibition Review: Being here (2025)

'Private Face'

Exhibition Review from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Black people may be said to have been excluded from art in two ways. Firstly, there have until fairly recently been few black artists, and secondly, black people have been rarely depicted in works of art and, where shown, are often placed in a subordinate role. These and other issues are addressed in an exhibition of the work of Barbara Walker, ‘Being Here’, at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The Whitworth display closed in late January, but it will move to the Arnolfini in Bristol from March.

Walker (barbarawalker.co.uk) was born in Birmingham in 1964, and only in 1996 did she obtain a BA in Art and Design. Since then she has been a prolific artist, in both painting and drawing, and one aspect of her oeuvre is that she usually works in series, producing not just individual works but linked pieces.

Between 1998 and 2005, for instance, she painted a series of portraits of black people under the heading of ‘Private Face’: friends and neighbours shown undertaking everyday tasks such as playing cards or having their hair arranged. ‘Louder than Words’ (2006–9) focuses on her son Solomon, who was frequently subject to stop and search by West Midlands Police. The report forms from the searches have portraits of Solomon or local scenes added to them. Also included is a reference to the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in London in 2005, a newspaper report with a drawing of Solomon on it.

Perhaps the most original and striking is the series Shock and Awe (2015–20). Walker scoured archives for photos of black soldiers in the two world wars, such as a South African general inspecting members of the South African Native Labour Corps in France in 1917. Her drawing based on this photo, ‘Parade II’, emphasises the soldiers, and the general is an almost blank outline. A similar approach is taken in other drawings from the same series, and again in Vanishing Point (since 2018), where classical paintings are re-presented in a new way, with the black individuals drawn more precisely and the white people (the focus of the original paintings) again shown as outlines.

All in all, an unexpected and thought-provoking exhibition.

Paul Bennett