Upside down moon - 2015

Another upside down moon last night, seen from our sitting room window in Greece. I immediately went outside on the terrace and started taking photographs.

This is the fourth time I have seen this phenomenon and it's always in February. What was different this time is that above the moon was Venus, very bright too. 

I find the moon fascinating and seeing this phenomenon is always exciting. One of my posts on this has reached 13,800 views and you can see from the comments that people find this fascinating too - you can see this post here

This is the scientific explanation:

An upside down moon is a result of the moon's orbit around the earth, and the earth's orbit around the sun. And exactly when you see the moon in the shape of a U (lit on the bottom) rather than a backward C depends on what latitude you are at.

We see the moon in the night sky because it is reflecting light from the sun. So the lit part of the moon always points towards the sun. As the earth travels around the sun, the tilt of the earth on its axis sometimes points the northern hemisphere towards the sun and sometimes points the southern hemisphere towards the sun. But this also changes the apparent path of the moon across the night sky when you are on earth looking out at it. Sometimes it travels at an angle towards the horizon and sometimes it travels straight down toward the horizon. When the crescent moon travels straight down the horizon, you will get the U shaped moon. This can happen once or twice a year, depending on the latitude of your location.

I was out on the terrace looking at the moon and Venus for about 10 minutes. During that time the moon had travelled quite a distance towards the horizon - in another 10 minutes it had disappeared behind the buildings.

Barbara Walker, Being Here - Part 2

Barbara Walker, Being Here

at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

This is the second post on this exhibition and I have used the same introduction as in part 1, which is the paragraph below. In this post I have concentrated on the more explicitly political works of the artist.

This is the first survey of Walker's work and brings together over 70 artworks, spanning the last 25 years. From small, detailed drawings on archival documents to monumental wall drawings, Walker combines exquisite technical skill with a critical eye on the social and political realities that shape black lives in Britain today.Walker experiments with techniques of visibility and erasure - enlarging, cutting-out, obscuring - to speak truth to power and prompt us to consider how we can collectively shape black futures.

Louder than Words, 2006-09:

'Solomon is my son, and I remember when he was first stopped and searched like it was yesterday. I felt helpless, because as a parent you're there to protect your children, and I couldn't do anything to stop it.

He felt disrespected and embarrassed, and for me, it was the thought of him being dehumanised. He was angry, and I was too. I channelled that anger into the work. My emotions are very much embedded in these drawings. I see the search record as a kind of drawing done by the police officer, which is why I wanted to draw on it, to introduce the mother's hand'.

This deeply personal series marks Walker's first use of the official document as an expanded form of portraiture. Here, drawing becomes her central medium of expression and methods of erasure, such as overpainting and obscuring, are introduced. Responding to her son being repeatedly stopped and searched by police, she impulsively began to draw him, and the locations the encounters took place, on to copies of the yellow police dockets that recorded the incidents. Walker digitally scans and enlarges the documents, transforming them into louder and more visible statements.

While these works are urgent and creative acts of love and care grounded in her position as a mother, they also confront wider concerns about the surveillance of black communities by the police.

Polite Violence II, 2006, (oil on archival inkjet)

Polite Violence III, 2006, (oil on archival inkjet)

I Can Paint a Picture with a Pin, 2006, (ink on digital image)

Untitled, 2006, (mixed media on digital image)

Brighter Future, 2006, (charcoal and conte on digital image)

Brighter Future and Brighter Future I, are created from enlargted scans of pages of the Independent newspaper from 25 July 2005. The article reports on the wrongful shooting of the 27 year old Brazilian man Jean Charles de Menezes by London Metropolitan Police. Walker draws tender portraits of her son over the newsprint, placing her personal story in dialogue with that of the parents of de Menezes who are pictured and quoted in the article.

Brighter Future I, 2006, (charcoal and conte on digital image)

Screen I, 2006, (charcoal on paper)

Screen II, 2006, (charcoal on paper)

Homegrown, 2006, (digital image)

Show and Tell, 2008-15: 

Show and Tell continues Walker's focus on perceptions of the black male body. The series began in 2008 during a residency in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she invited people into her studio. She engaged them in conversation on themes of self-expression, fashion and identity, while photographing and drawing them from life. For Walker, the series considers 'stereotyping and how people are judged, looked upon or perceived through their clothing'.

Walker deliberately obscures the faces of her sitters. Instead, attention is drawn exclusively to the backs of their heads, or their dressed annd styled bodies. She asks us to engage in active viewing and reckon with our own perceptions and prejudices, encouraging us to be aware and critical of our own gaze.

B44, 2007, (oil on canvas)

Construct I, 2009, (oil on canvas)

The Dichotomy of Sean, 2012, (mixed media)

The Dichotomy of Sean and The Dichotomy of Kenny connect the profiling and criminalisation of racialised young men explored in both Show and Tell and Louder Than Words, to the tragic loss of innocent young lives in the early 2000s. The texts at the bottom of the compositions are statements from media reorts on the widely reported deaths of Jean Charles De Menezes and Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old killed by a neighbourhood watch volunteer in Florida in 2012. The everyday nature of the statements chosen by Walker emphasises the innocence and fragility of these lives.

The Dichotomy of Kenny, 2012, (mixed media)

Construct III, 2009, (oil on canvas)

Finito, 2012, (charcoal on paper)

Same Difference III, 2008, (charcoal on paper)

With the words 'I am...' repeated under the figure in this drawing, Walker references Glenn Lighon's 1988 painting Untitled (I Am a Man). Ligon's iconic work is a reinterpretation of the signs reading 'I Am a Man' carried by the 1,300 public service workers, all black men, who went on strike in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 after two coworkers were killed due to unsafe working conditions. The slogan has become a powerful proclamation of humanity, dignity and justice.

Shock and Awe, 2015-20:

'I always have one foot in history and one foot in contemporary practice. I always go back to history. I look back and re-enact history to go forward'.

This series marks a crucial archival turn in Walker's practice. Over several years, she carried out extensive research into national war archives, to recover the forgotten contributions of black service men and women to British and European war efforts. Encountering a lack of African and Caribbean presence in official records, she supplemented the gaps with material found on eBay and in personal family records.

The works in this series are reinterpretations of archival photographs relating mainly to WWI and WWII, but also including portraits of contemporary British soldiers. Using trechniques of erasure, such as blind embossed print, she powerfully disrupts the historical record. White European servicemen and women are rendered almost entirely absent, the African and Caribbean soldiers are now brought to the fore, portrayed in illuminating detail. In other instances, we see her signature use of the document as a social and political backdrop to her intensely observed portraits.

Josiah 2016, (conte on digital image)

The extensive media reporting on the war in Afghanistan prompted Walker to consider the contributions of black soldiers to the British armed forces. Charly and Josiah are portraits of two contemporary soldiers. Each are delicately drawn over reproductions of recruitment posters from WWI that targeted the British colonies to address labour shortages in the British army. Walker's placement of the contemporary portrait over the document reveals the forgotten involvement of African and Caribbean military personnel across time.

Charly, 2016, (conte on digital image)

Backdrop, 2018, (graphite on embossed paper)

Untitled, 2015, (charcoal and white paint)

I Was There I, 2018, (ink, gold leaf, vellum and tracing paper on digital print)

I Was There, 2018, (ink gold leaf, vellum and tracing paper on digital print)

 I Was There, 2018, (ink, gold leaf, vellum and tracing paper on digital print)

Parade III, 2017, (graphite on embossed paper)

The Big Secret, 2016, (conte on paper)


Burden of Proof, 2022-2023:

In 2023, Walker was nominated for the Turner Prize for Burden of Proof, a series of drawings which gave visibility to individuals impacted by the Windrush Scandal. The scandal emerged in 2017 and exposed how Caribbean migrants of the Windrush generation were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants. The journalist Amelia Gentleman describes the scandal in her book, The Windrush Betrayal, and shares the stories of several of the sitters represented here.

'Having placed the burden of proof on individuals, the Home Office demanded to see evidence that would prove their right to remain in the UK. These mundane, forgotten pieces of paper have now become the oppressive instruments to prove their legitimacy. Yet, the documents reveal how these individuals have contributed to this country. They're not statistics on a piece of paper, these are real lives. There's a deliberate tension in the overlapping of the documents with the figure in the drawing, reflecting how these documents became more important than the individuals'. Barbara Walker.

Walker sits these layered portraits alongside a monumental charcoal wall drawing of the sitters. As is now a ritual for Walker, the wall drawing will be washed away at the end of the exhibition. This act of erasure is a personal and private moment that the artist undertakes in a symbolic re-enactment of the erasure of history and memory.

Burden of Proof 7, 2022, (mixed media with graphite, conte and pastel on paper)

Burden of Proof 3, 2022, (mixed media with graphite, conte and pastel on paper)

Burden of Proof 1, 2022, (mixed media with graphite, conte and pastel on paper)

Burden of Proof 9, 2022, (mixed media with graphite, conte and pastel on paper)


Soft Power, 2024:

In her first wallpaper design, Walker builds on Burden of Proof to celebrate the pressence of Caribbean heritage in Britain. Soft power is a printed wallpaper created from 13 graphite and conte crayong drawings. It shows six portraits of first and second generation Windrush migrants based in Manchester surrounded by archival images of newly arrived Commonwealth citizens and blossoming foliage.

The intricate pattern is a reinterpretation of traditional toile de Jouy design, inspired by Walker's research into the Whitworth's collection of textile and wallpapers. Toile de Jouy are French printed cottons produced between 1760 and 1830. They typically depict pastoral romantic scenes and florals, reflecting the tastes of the middle and upper classes.

Walker enbellishes the traditional design with affirmative portraits of the Caribbean diaspora. For Walker, these individuals are rendered 'visible, validated and centre-stage where they belong'.

Barbara Walker - Being Here

'To be an artist, to create in times of adversity, is to be optimistic. I have sought to make 'positive' images, or images that will have a positive impact. I love working with people who  are not used to having their voices heard. People who are often made visible in only the worst ways. I want to help make people visible in the best ways possible, by creating affirming images that speak of and to humanity'.

Being Here, by Barbara Walker

at the Whitworth, Manchester.

This is the first survey of Walker's work and brings together over 70 artworks, spanning the last 25 years. From small, detailed drawings on archival documents to monumental wall drawings, Walker combines exquisite technical skill with a critical eye on the social and political realities that shape black lives in Britain today.Walker experiments with techniques of visibility and erasure - enlarging, cutting-out, obscuring - to speak truth to power and prompt us to consider how we can collectively shape black futures.

End of the Affair, 2023, (graphite, charcoal, pastel and conte on Somerset Satin paper)

This self-portrait responds to the classical Greek myth of Leda and the Swan. The original story describes how Zeus transforms into a magnificent swan and 'seduces' (rapes)  Leda, queen of Sparta. This well-told story of antiquity has been depicted by many (mostly male) artists form the Italian Renaissance to today. Here, Walker retells this myth on her own terms, asserting herself as a powerful version of Leda who stands defiant, centre stage, in front of an emasculated Zeus.

Private Face:

Although drawing is recognised as Walker's primary technique, she initially trained as a painter. This post presents paintings from Private Face, her first body of work. They depict family and friends, and everyday scenes from Afro-Caribbean communities in Birmingham.

Responding to the negative stereotyping of black communities in the media, Walker set out to redefine perceptions of black life. Inspired by Birmingham's rich history of social documentary photography, she carried a camera around the city, building trust with sitters and taking photographs she later translated onto canvas. Individuals are captured on their own terms in closely observed, quiet moments. In scenes from a Pentecostal church, barbershops and markets, Walker captures spaces 'where the rituals and ceremonies of everyday black life occur'.

Attitude, 1998, (oil on canvas)

Boundary I, 2000, (oil on canvas)

'Boundary I centers on a barbershop, a familiar presence throughout the area of Handsworth, Birmingham, in which I grew up. I wanted to present a sensitive, empathetic interpretation of one of the very few spaces in which black men can freely congregate and fraternise. I have tried to capture a sense of the trust, mutual respect and affection that exists. As a woman seeking to document such scenes, I am in some respects an outsider. I have tried to use that outsider status to document rituals and spaces that might at first glance appear ordinary but are of profund importance and great beauty'.

Boundary II, 2000, (oil on canvas)

The Ritual, 2001, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, 2000, (oil on canvas)

Assembly 2005, (acrylic on canvas)

Pride, 2001, (oil on canvas)

The Sitter, 2002, (oil on canvas)

Peacemaker, 2001, (oil on canvas)

Zipporah, 2002, (oil on canvas)