Barbara Walker: Being Here

Being Here presents over 70 extraordinary artworks, including rarely seen paintings, her Turner Prize nominated drawing series Burden of Proof (2022-23), and a newly commissioned printed wallpaper Soft Power (2024).

For over twenty-five years, Walker has been making intensely observed and empathetic figurative work that creates space for Black presence, power and belonging.  Ranging from delicate graphite drawings on archival documents to a monumental charcoal wall drawing, Walker tackles wide-ranging themes such as the policing and surveillance of Black life, twentieth-century war histories, immigration and Old Master paintings to challenge conventions of representation and the histories they are rooted in.

The exhibition includes works from across the six major series Walker has made 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), alongside a new wallpaper, inspired by the Whitworth’s collection, that continues her representation of the Windrush generation.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue featuring new essays on Walker’s practice by Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, Eddie Chambers, Alice Correia, Leanne Green, Rianna Jade Parker and the exhibition curators Poppy Bowers and Hannah Vollam.