vane

Barbara Walker
Between 2002 and 2006, aged between 17 and 21, the black artist Barbara Walker's son Solomon was so often "stopped and searched" by the Birmingham police that it came to seem disproportionately significant and she began to record the situations in her artwork. At the end of each search, Solomon was presented with a yellow A5 copy of the official police form recording the questioning. The forms, combined with newspaper cuttings of seemingly racially motivated events, sketches of city sites and meticulously drawn portraits, now become the main background focus of Walker's graphic Louder Than Words collages. It is this contrast, between officialdom's authoritative and somewhat dehumanising paperwork on the one hand, and a mother's quite exquisitely sensitive recording of her son's particular features on the other, that affords the series a rare poignancy beyond declamatory propaganda.
This tiny article about from The Guardian guide about Barbara Walker immediately caught my attention. Not only do I care about the issue raised through her exhibition, I adore what I have seen of her artwork on her website. i wish i could see the exhibition, I'm sure it would be fantastic.

some more work of hers