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Barbara Walker
Graphite and coloured pencil on embossed paper
Drawing on public archives and art collections, British figurative artist Barbara Walker (b.1964) seeks out instances of Black absence in Western art history to raise questions around representation and belonging. Walker's works can be understood as vital documents of social commentary that highlight cultural and political issues in contemporary British life. From small, embossed works on paper through to large-scale oil paintings and monumental, site-specific wall drawings in charcoal, Walker's wide-ranging practice initiates conversations about race, gender and powder.
Vanishing Point, a series of graphite drawings on embossed paper begun in 2018, interrogates the representation of Black figures in works by artists traditionally identified as 'Old Masters'. In recreating historical artworks that depict Black figures in roles of servitude, Walker shifts the focus onto the often-unidentified Black subjects. Vanishing Point 24 (Mignard) references Pierre Mignard's painting Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, with an Unknown Female Attendant (1682) in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery. In Walker's adaptation, the duchess is reduced to an embossed outline, while the young servant girl is rendered in exquisite detail. 'The girl is a possession,; Walker points out, 'but she's got this stoic look. It's emotionally and psychologically disturbing but, as I draw, I imagine that I'm extracting and saving her;.*
From the exhibition
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure
(February - May 2024)
A major study of the Black figure – and its representation in contemporary art.
The exhibition, curated by writer Ekow Eshun, showcases the work of contemporary artists from the African diaspora, including Michael Armitage, Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Amy Sherald, and highlights the use of figures to illuminate the richness and complexity of Black life. As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced.
The exhibition features the work of leading artists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Hurvin Anderson, Michael Armitage, Jordan Casteel, Noah Davis, Godfried Donkor, Kimathi Donkor, Denzil Forrester, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Titus Kaphar, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili, Jennifer Packer, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Thomas J Price, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor and Barbara Walker
[*National Portrait Gallery]
Taken at the National Portrait Gallery
Barbara Walker
Graphite on embossed paper
The title of Walker’s “Vanishing Point” series refers both to the artistic technique of linear perspective, used in Old Master paintings, and the lost identities of Black figures in such works.
Here, Walker re-situates Titian’s Diana and Actaeon (1556–59) – a scene inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Using detailed drawing and blind intaglio printing, Walker uses processes akin to erasure to address, in her words, “a compelling absence of Black representation in our national archives and, by extension, in the collective memory of British society”.*
Prints and Poetry
At the turn of the nineteenth century, printmaking and poetry played a greater role in the public appreciation of art, especially as literacy rates increased and prints became cheaper. The aesthetic norms of Neoclassicism continued to underpin visual and literary traditions. Born in Senegambia, Phillis Wheatley wrote poems while enslaved in Boston; in 1773 she became the first African American to publish a volume of poetry, printed in London. Her poem “Niobe” responds to Richard Wilson’s classical landscape scene; both works refer to verses by the Roman poet Ovid.
Amid public discourse in Britain, artists created both abolitionist and pro-slavery imagery. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 abolished the trade in enslaved people but not the practice of enslavement, the gradual cessation of which began with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Thomas Stothard’s 1794 design ‘Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies’ appeared in a book that presented the trade in enslaved African people as humane. The image recasts the horrors of the Middle Passage – the forced journey of the enslaved across the Atlantic Ocean in European slave ships – as a Black goddess riding a shell chariot, admired by Neptune, who is waving the Union Jack.
Artists and writers including Margaret Burroughs and Kara Walker have responded to Stothard’s unsettling image. Robin Coste Lewis’s 2015 poem, “Voyage of the Sable Venus”, an excerpt of which is presented here, is composed of descriptions of Western art objects dating from 38,000 BCE to the present, in which a Black female figure is present.*
From the exhibition
Entangled Pasts, 1768–now: Art, Colonialism and Change
(February - April 2024)
‘Entangled Pasts’ explores connections between art associated with the Royal Academy of Arts and Britain’s colonial histories. At its founding by artists in 1768, under King George III, the institution’s first President, Joshua Reynolds, called the RA an ‘ornament’ to Britain’s empire. For over 250 years, artists and architects active in Britain have experienced and expressed divergent relationships to imperial histories. Individually, through families and via patrons, the links are innumerable and entwined. Today, the legacies of colonial histories continue to form part of the fabric of everyday life, physically and emotionally, across social, economic, cultural and political fields both national and global.
Works of art have always been agents of change, flashpoints of debate and producers of fluctuating meanings. A painting, sculpture, drawing, print, film or poem can act as a powerful lens through which complex situations can be viewed and nuanced understandings of them can emerge. ‘Entangled Pasts’ brings together 100 artworks to explore the role of art in shaping narratives of empire, colonialism, enslavement, resistance, abolition and indenture. An exhibition on this vast and complex subject is necessarily a partial, fragmentary view. Moments of history are refracted through the eyes of artists, especially contemporary British artists of the African, Caribbean and South Asian diasporas.
These artworks can represent only a fraction of the institution’s colonial links and the unfolding legacies of British colonialism around the world. Yet, in the visual and conceptual resonances between them, there exists a space for contemplation, inquiry, acknowledgement, reflection, imagination and ongoing conversations..
[*Royal Academy]
Taken at the Royal Academy
Barbara Walker
Graphite and coloured pencil on embossed paper
Drawing on public archives and art collections, British figurative artist Barbara Walker (b.1964) seeks out instances of Black absence in Western art history to raise questions around representation and belonging. Walker's works can be understood as vital documents of social commentary that highlight cultural and political issues in contemporary British life. From small, embossed works on paper through to large-scale oil paintings and monumental, site-specific wall drawings in charcoal, Walker's wide-ranging practice initiates conversations about race, gender and powder.
Vanishing Point, a series of graphite drawings on embossed paper begun in 2018, interrogates the representation of Black figures in works by artists traditionally identified as 'Old Masters'. In recreating historical artworks that depict Black figures in roles of servitude, Walker shifts the focus onto the often-unidentified Black subjects. Vanishing Point 24 (Mignard) references Pierre Mignard's painting Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, with an Unknown Female Attendant (1682) in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery. In Walker's adaptation, the duchess is reduced to an embossed outline, while the young servant girl is rendered in exquisite detail. 'The girl is a possession,; Walker points out, 'but she's got this stoic look. It's emotionally and psychologically disturbing but, as I draw, I imagine that I'm extracting and saving her;.*
From the exhibition
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure
(February - May 2024)
A major study of the Black figure – and its representation in contemporary art.
The exhibition, curated by writer Ekow Eshun, showcases the work of contemporary artists from the African diaspora, including Michael Armitage, Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Amy Sherald, and highlights the use of figures to illuminate the richness and complexity of Black life. As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced.
The exhibition features the work of leading artists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Hurvin Anderson, Michael Armitage, Jordan Casteel, Noah Davis, Godfried Donkor, Kimathi Donkor, Denzil Forrester, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Titus Kaphar, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili, Jennifer Packer, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Thomas J Price, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor and Barbara Walker
[*National Portrait Gallery]
Taken at the National Portrait Gallery
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Barbara Walker
Graphite and coloured pencil on embossed paper
Drawing on public archives and art collections, British figurative artist Barbara Walker (b.1964) seeks out instances of Black absence in Western art history to raise questions around representation and belonging. Walker's works can be understood as vital documents of social commentary that highlight cultural and political issues in contemporary British life. From small, embossed works on paper through to large-scale oil paintings and monumental, site-specific wall drawings in charcoal, Walker's wide-ranging practice initiates conversations about race, gender and powder.
Vanishing Point, a series of graphite drawings on embossed paper begun in 2018, interrogates the representation of Black figures in works by artists traditionally identified as 'Old Masters'. In recreating historical artworks that depict Black figures in roles of servitude, Walker shifts the focus onto the often-unidentified Black subjects. Vanishing Point 24 (Mignard) references Pierre Mignard's painting Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, with an Unknown Female Attendant (1682) in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery. In Walker's adaptation, the duchess is reduced to an embossed outline, while the young servant girl is rendered in exquisite detail. 'The girl is a possession,; Walker points out, 'but she's got this stoic look. It's emotionally and psychologically disturbing but, as I draw, I imagine that I'm extracting and saving her;.*
From the exhibition
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure
(February - May 2024)
A major study of the Black figure – and its representation in contemporary art.
The exhibition, curated by writer Ekow Eshun, showcases the work of contemporary artists from the African diaspora, including Michael Armitage, Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola and Amy Sherald, and highlights the use of figures to illuminate the richness and complexity of Black life. As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced.
The exhibition features the work of leading artists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Hurvin Anderson, Michael Armitage, Jordan Casteel, Noah Davis, Godfried Donkor, Kimathi Donkor, Denzil Forrester, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Titus Kaphar, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili, Jennifer Packer, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Thomas J Price, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor and Barbara Walker
[*National Portrait Gallery]
Taken at the National Portrait Gallery