About the work

This drawing is based on a verse in Psalm 75 in the Old Testament which describes people who want or have too much as having ‘fat eyes’. I’ve drawn myself with fat eyes to see what that would look like. I realise I often want, or have, too much. Some of the most vivid imagery comes from the King James version of the Bible. I’m planning a series of self-portraits based on crazy images like this, and this is the first one…

 

Date and country of birth

1950, GB

Career Highlights

Bobby Baker’s acclaimed intersectional feminist practice includes performance, drawing, and installation, and persistently exposes the undervalued and stigmatised aspects of women’s daily lives, exemplified by pioneering works such as Drawing on a Mother’s Experience (1988) and Kitchen Show (1991).

Most recently, Baker restaged her radical sculptural installation, An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976), as part of Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 at Tate Britain, accompanied by the tour to the Whitworth in Manchester in 2025.

Photographs of the original installation of An Edible Family in a Mobile Home featured in Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain and tour to National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh (25 May–26 Jan 2024) and the Whitworth, Manchester (7 Mar­–1 Jun 2025). The photographs will also be presented, along with associated archival material, in the forthcoming exhibition Burning Down the House: Rethinking Family at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (1 Jun–8 Sep 2024).

Baker’s Timed Drawings (1984–1985) are currently on show as part of the Hayward Touring exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, curated by Hettie Judah for Arnolfini, Bristol (9 Mar–2 Jun 2024), touring to MAC, Birmingham (22 Jun–9 Sep 2024); Millennium Gallery, Sheffield (24 Oct 2024–21 Jan 2025) and Dundee Contemporary Arts (Feb–Jun 2025).