Barbara Walker was born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham, England in 1964, graduating in Fine Art and Design from the University of Central England, Birmingham, in 1996, and then receiving a post-graduate certificate in education from Wolverhampton University. Her widely exhibited work, particularly portraiture, investigates issues of class, power, gender, race, representation, and belonging. In 2023 Walker was elected a Royal Academician.
Painter and draughtswoman, Barbara Walker was born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham, England in 1964. She graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art and Design from the University of Central England, Birmingham, in 1996, and later obtained a post-graduate certificate in education from Wolverhampton University. Growing up in Birmingham, Walker's experiences as the child of immigrant parents have directly shaped a practice concerned with issues of class and power, gender, race, representation and belonging. Walker makes figurative portraits in a range of media and formats, from small embossed works on paper to paintings on canvas and large-scale charcoal wall drawings. Her works depict subjects who are often cast as minorities, inviting the viewer to look beyond the anonymising act of categorising or classifying citizens. Her pictures make visible the lives of others and uncover the allusions associated with the labels conferred upon people by society. She often references public archives to create works that effectively transfer visibility back to the subject, offering an alternative interpretation of a nation's history. The narrative of national heritage, presented through public collections, is informed by acquisitions and the collecting practice of privileged individuals throughout history; Walker works to challenge these limited and often partial standpoints, and through her pictures introduces opportunities for the contemporary viewer to take into consideration other perspectives beyond those of the powerful institution. Throughout her practice, Walker addresses a necessary re-writing of history, or at least an alternative take on history. Her removal of detail – through erasing, tearing away, cutting out, embossing, blotting, whitewashing – emphasises a dramatic absence of representation in society. After seeing her portraits, ‘one comes away with the profound sense of identity being constantly under construction and the overwhelming need for history to be continuously checked, corrected and restructured’ (Contemporary Art Society website).
Walker has described her interest in figuration as always being ‘drawn to the figure, not necessarily, or not only, its portraiture aspects but more so body politics’ and her artistic practice as the result of her art school training that ‘provided me with the important opportunities to think about how as an artist I had the power to push back, and to create images other than the nasty corrosive caricatures of Black people frequently peddled by the mainstream media and dominant culture’ (Barbara Walker review, The Guardian). Widely exhibited, Walker's recent solo exhibitions in the UK have included As Seen at Tiwani Contemporary, London (2013); Sub Urban at the James Hockey Gallery, part of the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham (2015); Shock and Awe at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham (2016); Vanishing Point at Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (2018); and Place, Space and Who at the Turner Contemporary, Margate (2019).
Walker's works have also been included in significant group exhibitions in the UK and internationally, including One Day Something Happens: Paintings of People, A Hayward Touring and Arts Council Collection exhibition (2015); the Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017), Zeichen at MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen, Germany (2018), A Slice Through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawings, Modern Art Oxford (2018), The Gallery of Small Things at the Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2018), Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (2019), and Protest and Remembrance at the Alan Cristea Gallery, London (2019). In recent years, Walker has worked on a range of public art projects, including a large commission for Facebook's London headquarters. In her solo exhibition at Cristea Roberts Gallery, entitled Vanishing Point (2022), Walker reinterpreted classical paintings, combining detailed graphite drawing and blind embossing, refiguring well-known Old Master and classical Western painters – among them Johann Liss, Daniel Vertangen and Paolo Veronese – from major public museums, including the National Gallery. Walker selected scenes with Black subjects, often depicted in the role of slaves, servants or attendants. She embossed out the white figures, leaving a blank sheet of white paper onto which she drew the Black figures in graphite. By placing a Black figure at the centre of each work, Walker offered an alternative and balanced depiction of the European artistic canon.
Barbara Walker’s work is held in numerous UK public collections, including the Arts Council Collection, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, British Museum, Government Art Collection, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, and the American Embassy in London. Walker was awarded the 2020 Bridget Riley Fellowship at The British School at Rome and received the inaugural Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in 2017, in association with the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. She was also awarded an MBE in the 2019 New Year Honours for her services to British Art and in 2023 was elected a Royal Academician. Barbara Walker currently lives and works in Birmingham, England.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Barbara Walker]
Publications related to [Barbara Walker] in the Ben Uri Library