Barbara Walker: Being Here, The Whitworth and Arnolfini

The Katrin Bellinger Collection recently loaned Barbara Walker’s Marking the Moment I (fig. 1) to the artist’s first major survey exhibition, Barbara Walker: Being Here, which travelled from the Whitworth, University of Manchester to Arnolfini in Bristol. Being Here traced Walker’s figurative work from the 1990s to today through a presentation of almost 60 works. It conveyed Walker’s dedication to tackling contemporary issues of race, class, and gender head-on, which she accomplishes through powerful portraits of her family and her community, as well as reinterpretations of historic images.

Marking the Moment I is part of a larger series of drawings produced between 2021 and 2024. To produce each drawing, Walker began by recreating a print from either the British Museum or the Rijksmuseum’s collections. She then placed translucent mylar over the work and strategically cut it to render the Black figures visible. In so doing, Walker reverses the compositional hierarchies that structure many of these prints, where Black figures are positioned in the margins.

Another drawing by Walker has recently joined the collection: Self-Portrait V (Venice) (fig. 2). Also part of a series, this large conté and charcoal drawing deliberately plays with the dialogue between finished and unfinished. Walker produced it during a 2025 residency in Venice, where she reflected on the experience of being anonymous in a new city and was particularly inspired by the sixteenth-century artist Jacopo Tintoretto’s compositions that look down from a high angle.

Barbara Walker: Being Here was first presented at the Whitworth, University of Manchester from 4 October 2024 – 26 January 2025, and was on view at Arnolfini from 8 March – 25 May 2025. The exhibition is also accompanied by a catalogue.