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artreview.com 16 October 2008

Barbara Walker's Page

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Jeffery Callaham left a comment for Barbara Walker 7 hours ago
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Profile

Website
WWW.barbarawalker.co.uk
Member type
Artist
If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?
Digital, Drawing, Painting
About my artwork
The work addresses the personal, social and political implications of the controversial powers of the police stop and search act. Living in Birmingham, I am witnessing at first hand a curious and potent collision of several different factors. Birmingham has for decades upon decades been a very multicultural city, though more recent influxes have served to add layer upon layer to that multiculturalism. And Birmingham was of course the location of the horrific and traumatic fatal shootings of innocent teenage girls, not long ago. As with other cities, ‘gun crime’ and ‘drug crime’ have become, to varying degrees, much more prominent. And Birmingham is a city in which the police have, for whatever reasons, made extensive use of their ‘stop and search’ powers. As a parent, an artist, and a life-long resident of Britain’s second city, I was keen to produce a new body of work that took as its starting point these disparate factors, as they impacted on the life of my son.


Between the period of 2002 –2006 and aged between 17 and 21years old, my son Solomon was subjected to being stopped by the police on several separate occasions. On each occasion, he was asked a series of questions and searched. As now apparently required by law, at the end of the encounter he was presented – by the police - with yellow A5 duplicate copy of an official form relating to the stop and search. Curious about these incidents affecting and involving my son, I began to collect these carbon copies. As an artist whose practice has, for some years now, sought to document the lives of Birmingham’s Black community, I wanted to find ways in which I could address, within my artistic practice, what has been happening to Solomon on the streets of his home city. The resulting work analyses the events and the almost ritualistic procedure of stop and search. The work I’ve produced will, I hope, pose this question: given that my son has, apparently, while going about his lawful business, given the police ‘suspicions’ and given that these ‘suspicions’ have led to him being stopped and searched on a number of occasions, what are the consequences and the implications of being a young Black male in British society today? Furthermore, what informs this curious negative stereotype that insists that young black men are somehow perpetually ‘suspicious’ and worthy of police scrutiny? What is it that apparently makes them such a threat to society or community? To me, as a mother and an artist, the crumpled yellow bits of paper given to my son Solomon at the end of his encounters with the police symbolise these questions. Likewise of course, the crumpled yellow bits of paper have in their own ways come to reflect and represent Solomon’s own frustration, anger and above all fear.
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At 8:37pm on 15th October 2008, Jeffery Callaham said…
Thanks, so much, for your kind comments on my work.

Jeffery Callaham, the story-teller artist
At 11:34pm on 28th August 2008, Jessica L. Porter, Raandesk Gallery said…
Wow! These are really intense. You have a lot of skill. Are these some of your most recent works?
At 10:20pm on 3rd June 2008, Bethan Hamilton said…
Thankyou! I really love your drawings and the fact that your subject matter is quite the opposite of mine!
At 7:22pm on 2nd June 2008, Erna G.S. said…
nice to meet you too Barbara your works are great
At 1:57pm on 1st June 2008, Renate Siedentopf said…
Dear Barbara,
Very nice pieces of work here! Something different and extremely beautiful!
Regards
At 5:06am on 16th April 2008, reuber said…
great job
 
 

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