Turner Contemporary announces publication of new book celebrating the life and work of Barbara Walker

Turner Contemporary are pleased to announce the publication of a new book celebrating the life and work of Barbara Walker is now available to purchase from Turner Contemporary.

This fully illustrated publication is the first book dedicated to the art of British, Birmingham-based artist Barbara Walker (b. 1964). For over 20 years, Walker has been committed to a practice of figurative drawing and painting, concerned with class, gender, race, power and representation. Working in a wide range of media, from wall drawings to embossed works on paper, her work is about making people visible and challenging the absence and misrepresentation of marginalised and overlooked subjects.

This publication includes new writing by Paul Gilroy, Professor of Humanities UCL, Sarah Martin, Head of Exhibitions, Turner Contemporary, and Aïcha Mehrez, Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art, Tate, alongside an interview with the artist by Courtney J. Martin, Director, Yale Center for British Art. It includes 79 images of key bodies of work, spanning the whole of Walker’s career.

This book launches as Walker’s installation ‘Place, Space and Who’ – a site-specific drawing featuring five women and girls from the African Diaspora living in Margate and Kent – is on show at Turner Contemporary’s Sunley gallery.

“We are thrilled to be able to realise the first monograph dedicated to Walker’s practice. I am very grateful to the Paul Mellon centre for Studies in British Art and Cristea Roberts Gallery for providing the funding to create this stunning publication. “ — Victoria Pomery, Director, TURNER CONTEMPORARY

‘Place, Space and Who’ will remain on show in the gallery until 26 September 2021 when Walker will remove the large-scale charcoal and chalk drawings from the gallery’s walls.

You can buy your copy of the book in the gallery shop and online.

Barbara Walker MBE was born and lives in Birmingham. Recent solo exhibitions include Vanishing Point, Jerwood Gallery (2018); Shock and Awe, Midlands Arts Centre (2016). Recent group exhibitions include the Lahore Biennial (2020); A Slice Through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawings, Modern Art Oxford (2018) and The Gallery of Small Things, Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2018). She has been awarded the 2020 Bridget Riley Fellowship at The British School at Rome, the Paul Hamlyn Artist Award 2020, and the inaugural Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in 2017.