Artist: Barbara Walker

Victoria Miro presents an exhibition by Barbara Walker. Completed during a recent residency with the gallery in Venice, this new body of work features self-portraits created in dialogue with Old Masters and the experience of being an anonymous figure immersed in the city

Described by the art historian Eddie Chambers as ‘one of the most talented, productive and committed artists of her generation’, Barbara Walker is acclaimed for works that tell contemporary stories hinged on historical circumstances, often employing portraiture to invite the viewer to look beyond anonymising acts of categorisation. The issues central to Walker’s practice of belonging, power, visibility and representation are here turned inwards as the artist spent extended time in Venice, negotiating her relationship to the Old Master works she viewed in museums such as the Ca’ Rezzonico, in tandem with the experience of being an anonymous figure in a city of endlessly shifting light, water and reflection.

While Walker has often referenced archival material to confer visibility on the lives of others, in these new works, the artist herself becomes the central subject. She drew inspiration from Old Masters including Veronese, in particular his use of light, and Tintoretto, whose employment of tone and exaggerated perspective to create a sense of unfolding drama, was especially influential. An unexpected engagement with the Italian Rococo painter Rosalba Carriera, acclaimed as a pastel portraitist who often portrayed visitors to Venice, further shaped her approach to these new self-portraits and the conventions of female representation.

Encircling these works are ideas of freedom, vulnerability, permanence, transience, public perception and private reflection. Working in charcoal enabled Walker to experiment with a variety of techniques. Her confident stance is one of self-confrontation, while her mark-making explores different emotional registers, at times calm, at others turbulent and unpredictable. The resulting drawings capture the body in a specific time and space, simultaneously dispersing it to become part of a broader, more elusive reality, while concepts of change in relation to identity, crucial to Walker’s practice, are mirrored in Venice’s transient nature, constantly shifting with the tides and seasons. This exhibition is the Spring and starting point for a new body of work.