Conversations at the Walker is essential viewing. As well as showing the work of a handful of the UKs most influential Black artists, it shares work from Liverpool based artists who are overdue exhibitions on this scale and in these sorts of institutions.
Ivy Kalungi’s ‘Calling Rods’ is possibly subtlest work the show, but its execution is flawless. The cast steel and ceramic rods explore memories of trauma, and hold them in space and time – isolating the reflection for future generations.
There is pensive illustrative work from Jade Montserrat which wields more power than the gallery itself, by scribing itself directly onto the walls.
Zinzi Minot’s sculpture, ‘BLOODSOUND’, kicks you in the chin as soon as you walk in, with rich, overwhelming audio collaged from political speeches, personal archive and track samples of sonic dance.
Joy Yamusangie’s gigantic canvases offer a belly laugh and immediately relatable presentations of obscure desires (particularly ‘Remember Me – Rodeo King’), next to ‘Milkess’, Miranda Forrester’s explorations of lesbian motherhood.
Lubaina Himid’s central sculpture earths the entire exhibition and offers the emerging artists around her gravitas, while the work itself being deeply political – created in response to 7,450 people currently homeless in Manchester.
I could go on.
Conversations, curated by Sumuyya Khader, is powerful in everything it says and everything it doesn’t. As far as praise for the Walker goes, they’ve supported this, given it space, and enabled a local Black producer to curate something spectacular.
Everything beyond that facilitation is down to the artists and the curator, so the exhibition’s energy is more contemporary than its setting.
And then there’s the question of power. Who wields it? Why? How? When do they use it for good?
I’ve had time to reflect between the exhibition launch and this publication, and a chance to read a few other reviews of the show. A few suggest that this is the Walker starting to redress a balance in their collection. It’s definitely part of that process, but it’s further down the line that the beginning of it.
The Walker have been installation installations and adding the work of Black artists to their collection for the last few years. There has been a deficit in Black women artists as part of that process, but the fact the process had already begun has meant that Conversations is able to be bolder, and present these ideas to the rest of the art world with some sort of credence.
It’s not the Walker saying “look what we’ve done, isn’t this a good start?”, it’s the Walker saying “do this. It’s time. We’ve tried it. Its failed. This is better. This makes a difference.”
So much of that is down to, as I mentioned before, the freedom given to Sumuyya Khader as Conversations’ curator, in letting her show this work in a way that presents every artist as an individual, while giving weight to the heritage that informs their subject.
Every artist here is making work that represents them and their experience. Some of it is about motherhood, some of it is about fertility and medical care, some of it is about race, some is about holding to dreams of riding a rodeo bull.
Its almost frustrating that there needs to be wall text describing the context, and the wall text itself reads as frustrated. One section reads:
“Each artist in this show is unique and yet they are (perceived as) bonded together by being racialised as Black. This term is often used to categorize and define artists, in a way that white artists are not.
“Group shows such as this are intended to ‘hold space’ in the gallery […] this approach risks obscuring individual artists’ identities.”
These are British artists, making work about trans experience, lives as women, cultural conflict and personal heritage, but the exhibition is there to redress a singular balance. That means, inevitably, that we read this whole show as being about Black British artists. So don’t.
Conversations is an exhibition by Britain’s leading artists, local emerging talent, and Turner Prize winners. In it, there are stories of cultural identity, gender identity, personal trauma, collective trauma, and British nightlife. There are also political narratives displayed alongside sheer humour, and traditionally accomplished painting shown with fine craft.
Conversations is outstanding, because its artists are.
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Conversations is open at Walker Art Gallery until 9th March 2025
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith