Caroline Walker features in ‘Everyday Heroes’
Caroline Walker features in the group exhibition ‘Everyday Heroes’, presented in the outdoor spaces around the Hayward Gallery and the Southbank Centre, London. Celebrating ordinary people through art and poetry, this open-air exhibition highlights the vital contributions that key workers and frontline staff have made during the coronavirus pandemic.
'At this particular moment, perhaps more than ever, this kind of outdoor exhibition can play a crucial role in furnishing the inspiration which visual art and poetry provide to our collective imagination and civic life.' – Ralph Rugoff, Hayward Gallery Director
The exhibition documents more than 40 people, among them health workers, bus drivers, faith workers and shop assistants, depicted in intimate portraits that portray the collective response to the crisis. Walker’s contribution ‘Elaine’, 2020 features a shop assistant who continued to work at the artist’s local bakery during lockdown. Walker explains: ‘The bakery is a big feature of the local community. In recent weeks they’ve had to adapt how they do business, serving from the door of the shop’. Walker’s paintings often depict women at work in the service industries, in roles she describes as ‘largely taken for granted’ or ‘designed to be unseen’.
Artists included in ‘Everyday Heroes’ are Michael Armitage, Lydia Blakeley, Jeremy Deller, Laura Grace Ford, Mahtab Hussain, Evan Ifekoya, Matthew Krishanu, Ryan Mosley, Janette Parris, Alessandro Raho, Silvia Rosi, Benjamin Senior, Juergen Teller, Caroline Walker and Barbara Walker. Poets featured in the presentation are Romalyn Ante, Raymond Antrobus, Simon Armitage, Jackie Kay, Vanessa Kisuule and Roger Robinson.
Installation view of Caroline Walker, Elaine, 2020 at Southbank Centre's Everyday Heroes, 2020. Copyright the artist. Photo credit: Linda Nylind
