Look Club
Look Club
Barbara Walker exhibition
Look Club
Look Club
Barbara Walker exhibition
The following review of our recent Look Club was written by Alice Campbell a Second-year History of Art and History Student at Manchester University.
Friends of the Whitworth Look Club – Barbara Walker: Being Here
On 13 November, a dozen art history students joined with a similar number of current Friends of the Whitworth in Barbara Walker’s ‘Being Here’ exhibition for one of the Friends of the Whitworth’s Student Programme’s ‘Look Clubs’. The curator of the exhibition, Poppy Bowers, navigated us around the space holding some of Walker’s works from the past 25 years to discuss closely five works. Birmingham-born Walker focuses her work on how the social and political climate in Britain affects Black representation, attempting to establish a space of visibility and power, which has been previously disregarded. This is made clear in more than 70 artworks displayed in the three exhibition galleries, from her only paint series ‘Private Face’ to her 2024 wallpaper design ‘Soft Power’, celebrating Windrush migrants in Manchester.
We began our conversation in front of Walker’s only self-portrait of the exhibition, ‘End of the Affair’, which kick-started our discussion on the reallocation of power and reframing of traditional narratives, a theme that repeatedly came up. Bowers’ knowledge of Walker’s life and how her experiences were reflected in her works helped to guide our conversations, particularly around an individual’s documentation being more important than the individuals themselves. We discussed how Walker exposes this by making art with actual stop and search dockets and by the blurring of figures with personal documents, which were used by those faced with proving their right to remain in the UK or with losing their individuality and identity.
We ended reflecting on the absence of Black figures in historic European culture, looking at how Walker has used different techniques to highlight their Black figures by effacing other figures in historic images marginalising Black representation. Walker’s recent wallpaper work ‘Soft Power’ was a fitting final piece to look at and culminate our topics of conversation on Black identity, visibility and recognition.
Barbara Walker: Being Here is on until 26th January 2025. Take a visit to look at the evolution of Walker’s career and her reassessment of visibility and erasure.
Alice Campbell
Second-year History of Art and History Student
November 2024
Co-published with Dispatches in Art History, the blog for Manchester’s art history students.
The following review of our recent Look Club was written by Alice Campbell a Second-year History of Art and History Student at Manchester University.
Friends of the Whitworth Look Club – Barbara Walker: Being Here
On 13 November, a dozen art history students joined with a similar number of current Friends of the Whitworth in Barbara Walker’s ‘Being Here’ exhibition for one of the Friends of the Whitworth’s Student Programme’s ‘Look Clubs’. The curator of the exhibition, Poppy Bowers, navigated us around the space holding some of Walker’s works from the past 25 years to discuss closely five works. Birmingham-born Walker focuses her work on how the social and political climate in Britain affects Black representation, attempting to establish a space of visibility and power, which has been previously disregarded. This is made clear in more than 70 artworks displayed in the three exhibition galleries, from her only paint series ‘Private Face’ to her 2024 wallpaper design ‘Soft Power’, celebrating Windrush migrants in Manchester.
We began our conversation in front of Walker’s only self-portrait of the exhibition, ‘End of the Affair’, which kick-started our discussion on the reallocation of power and reframing of traditional narratives, a theme that repeatedly came up. Bowers’ knowledge of Walker’s life and how her experiences were reflected in her works helped to guide our conversations, particularly around an individual’s documentation being more important than the individuals themselves. We discussed how Walker exposes this by making art with actual stop and search dockets and by the blurring of figures with personal documents, which were used by those faced with proving their right to remain in the UK or with losing their individuality and identity.
We ended reflecting on the absence of Black figures in historic European culture, looking at how Walker has used different techniques to highlight their Black figures by effacing other figures in historic images marginalising Black representation. Walker’s recent wallpaper work ‘Soft Power’ was a fitting final piece to look at and culminate our topics of conversation on Black identity, visibility and recognition.
Barbara Walker: Being Here is on until 26th January 2025. Take a visit to look at the evolution of Walker’s career and her reassessment of visibility and erasure.
Alice Campbell
Second-year History of Art and History Student
November 2024
Co-published with Dispatches in Art History, the blog for Manchester’s art history students.
Comments & Discussion
No comments to display