‘I’d rather not use the term “retrospective” because that term feels very complete; there is still so much more to come. I’m more comfortable with the idea of a mid-career survey show because I haven’t even met or reached my peak,’ Barbara Walker told me ahead of her forthcoming show at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery.
Though Walker has been a force in the Black British art scene since emerging in the 1990s, the Whitworth exhibition is her first major survey show. It’s an opportunity she did not anticipate – ‘I didn’t come into this space thinking, one day it will be a retrospective or a survey show, or even being a Turner Prize nominee or an RA [a Fellow of the Royal Academy].’ ‘I’m just compelled to create.’
Image: Barbara Walker in her studio, 2022
© Barbara Walker
Photo by Chris Keenan
