In almost every room of the Walker Art Gallery, Nahem Shoa’s paintings, some new, some not, replace disputed masterpieces. The intervention is a clever new way to contextualise and personalise an historic fine art collection, and it’s really worth exploring.
Responding first to the lack of Black artists in the Walker’s collection, Shoa’s work inserts itself alongside recognisable works, depicting family life, friendships and portraiture. At face value, it’s a clear statement that the subject of nearly all of the works on display at the Walker are not specific to any culture.
But there’s also a thread worth pulling, about how the works that each of Nahem Shoa’s paintings relate to have influenced him as an artist, whether its as a direct reference for the structure of a painting, or as a cue to how to approach certain subjects.
‘Giant Head of Gbenga’, the painting that gives the intervention its title, ‘Into The Light’, is part of a series of giant heads, designed to bring the sitter and portrait painter closer together. The light, caught on Gbenga’s head bounces back into the gallery space, not only bringing the sitter out of shadows, but distinctly into contact with the viewer too.
It’s personal, and the fact the painting is named for its sitter, sets it very much apart from the most significant work used as a counterpart in this intervention.
The painting sits next to Augustus John’s ‘Two Jamaican Girls’. The painting shows two girls, unnamed, both bored, both probably unaware of Augustus John’s reasons for being there. The painter was apparently in favour of abolition, but the result is a painting that shows two girls who were, functionally, being used as a tool, in a painting where no context is given to their background, story, or anything else.
This painting, with all the mystery that surrounds it, is the only portrait of Black people in the permanent display at Walker Art Gallery.
So Gbenga’s giant head is doing a massive amount of work. It doesn’t just highlight the need for more diverse representation in this collection, and on these walls. It offers the first, literally, encounter with a Black body. It means that when you walk into the Walker, you find a named, willing, sitter, being painted by a painter who cared about representing them. And you get there before you get to ‘Two Jamaican Girls’.
Through the rest of the gallery, there are depictions of Shoa’s friends and extended family, as well as professional sitters. They are placed alongside and in reference to paintings that share their themes, and in every case they bring the experience of seeing the historic paintings into the present.
There are objects and paintings that have remained in the same spot on the Walker’s walls since I was a child, trapsing round on school trips. So if, like me, you’re familiar with the Walker’s collection displays to the point of indifference, Nahem Shoa’s multiple interventions are a brilliant way to reignite a passion for the paintings you’ve started floating past between the entrance and the temporary exhibitions.
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Into The Light: An Intervention by Nahem Shoa was on free display until 12th August 2024
Words, Kathryn Wainwright