Barbara Walker
Barbara Walker was the inaugural recipient of the Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in 2017. The award funded a period of studio research and work which led to the initial iteration of her continued series entitled Vanishing Point first shown at Hastings Contemporary. Subsequently, she has shown with Cristea Roberts Gallery and has been a Bridget Riley Fellow in the British School in Rome. She was elected an RA in 2023, and was nominated in the same year for the 37th Turner Prize for her exhibition at the Sharjah Biennial 15 entitled Burden of Proof. Her works in the Biennial focused on individuals from the Windrush generations. The Turner Prize jury was impressed with Walker’s use of “portraits of monumental scale to tell stories of a similarly monumental nature, while maintaining a profound tenderness and intimacy”.
The artist worked in a resolute collaboration with Windrush survivors through close portraiture, by turns life size and on an epic scale in wall drawings. The nobility and stature of their humanity is proclaimed and contrasted with the shameful exercise of the hostile environment pursued by the British state. Nonetheless, as with all her wall drawings the final act at the close of the exhibition will be to see her washing the figures away in a symbolic act of “removal”. The impression left, however, by the presence of these individuals for viewers of the exhibition, will have been indelible.
Barbara Walker - Burden of Proof
Barbara Walker - Vanishing Point
“Part of her practice involves drawing directly on walls, and those drawings that literally take time, immense skill, [are] washed off at the end, in a practice that reflects … how people can be marginalised on account of their identity and injustice”