National galleries such as the Tate are one of our cultural treasures, as I should have said to my grandchild when asked the question which begins my William Nicholson review in this edition. Mostly free, they not only contain world-class art but also host special exhibitions. Alongside blockbusters (Turner/Constable and the current Whistler exhibition) which help to generate much-needed funds while providing opportunities to see works borrowed from other galleries, the Tate also hosts shows devoted to less-familiar artists, such as Hurvin Anderson.
Anderson, the youngest of eight children and the only one born in England, is the son of Jamaican parents who emigrated to this country in 1965 and then settled in Birmingham. From an early age he seemed to be conflicted as to where he belonged —a dichotomy which figures significantly in his work— and also showed a keen interest in photography, which his family encouraged. Many of his paintings germinate from photographs that then inform their evolution.
One of the most striking works on show is Ball Watching 1. The catalogue contains the photograph from which Anderson drew inspiration for a series of paintings between 1997 and 2010. As a young boy and teenager Anderson would play football with other youngsters in a large overgrown space called Handsworth Park, and in 1983 he took a photograph of his friends on the edge of the park’s lake, looking forlornly at their football floating away in the water. This first work is oddly unsettling: a group of boys at the side of the water, their bodies blurred with their backs to us, are seemingly sat on a bench. However, on the far side of the water is a tropical landscape of palm trees and overgrown vegetation, as if the artist has transposed his Birmingham experience into the world of his ancestors.
Another in the series, from the same year, is just as impressive. The boys are still sitting on the bench, but there are also others standing along the whole length of the canvas. However, this time they are placed on a spur of land completely surrounded by water, with a blue sky shimmering in the distance. Again there is an overwhelming sense of dislocation: the boys are turned away from us, indistinct and somehow anonymous, and appear to be marooned. The painting conjures a sensation of remoteness and separation from this otherworldly landscape in which they find themselves.
This evocation of dislocation is repeated in several other works, as Anderson looks back to his childhood and the feeling of not really belonging anywhere. Growing up in Handsworth, he experienced how Black people lived under the constant threat of racial abuse, with a pervasive sense of being unwanted and unvalued. However, when he visited Jamaica he discovered that this was not his home either: the images in the glossy travel brochures camouflaged a less appealing side to the island.
Another early work, this time from 1998, continues the theme of alienation within a hostile environment. In Beaver Lake a mother and daughter are standing on the edge of a bleak, frozen landscape with a distant cityscape in the background. Anderson’s sister had emigrated to Canada, and this image was created from a photograph taken on a visit there. Although it is a portrait, the faces of both figures have been painted out: they are strangely distant from us, unknowable. Wrapped up in warm clothes, side by side but not touching, the parent and child appear to have a disconnect which, given the harsh landscape in which they find themselves, is deeply disturbing. The figures radiate stillness, posing for the image, but the abstract nature of their clothes, dappled and patterned, adds to the overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness. They seem to be stranded far from the city behind them.
A painting from 2000, Untitled (Livingstone Road), presents us with a prime example of Anderson’s meticulousness. It is only after drawing on the photographs that serve as inspiration and making small collages to design the possible final work that he starts to paint on the canvas. This particular painting is monumental in scale but filled with small details. We are standing at a crossroads at night, looking at a low wooden fence and a flat-roofed three-storied block of indeterminate function. Most of the canvas is deep black, since, although the night is clear, there are no stars or moon to lighten the sky. No human figures are visible, although there must be some kind of light behind us to illuminate the scene. Yet again there is a feeling of isolation and displacement: we cannot see where the road leads, and there is nothing but a stillness that might last forever. The impression that this picture creates is not unlike what one feels in front of a later Rothko work, staring into a blackness which feels like eternity. The experience is disquieting, although the picture also radiates a strange calm.
Anderson’s career has followed a linear progression in sync with his developing talent. Following an Arts Foundation course at Birmingham Polytechnic, he achieved a BA (Hons) at the Wimbledon College of Art and then completed his studies with an MA from the Royal College of Art. He remained in London, where his early work was soon noticed. However, he has never committed himself to painting in a singular, recognisable way but has varied his output stylistically, while remaining remarkably consistent to his core mission of exploring his experience as a young Black man growing up in an often-hostile environment.
In 2006 Anderson produced his first painting in a series honouring the institution of the West Indian barbershop. Some of these pictures depict customers, while others concentrate on the physical environment of the shop itself. These barbershops held enormous significance for West Indian communities newly settled in a country in which they faced ostracisation. They were often unwelcome in churches, pubs, clubs, or even barbershops: local barbers would plead an inability to cut West Indians’ hair correctly, and some did it so badly that customers did not return. The outcome was that the community began to open up its own premises, and the barbershop became a place of social gathering, where West Indians could express themselves freely and find commonality with their neighbours in an environment free from racial hostility. The barbershop thus became a symbol of cultural identity and community independence.
Anderson’s barbershop paintings are an affirmation of this culture, but also a political response to his experiences growing up. In Peter’s Sitters II from 2009, a single figure is seated on a barber’s chair with a red patterned cloak around his shoulders. The background gives no indication of place: he is placed against two blue rectangles, one slightly larger than the other, which, in turn, are surrounded by a light grey border. They bring an abstract element to the work, as if the figure has been transplanted into a void, and indeed he himself is the only reference to West Indian barbershop culture in a painting which conveys his haunting stillness, even though he belongs in a bustling communal space. We have no indication who the man might be, nor why he is there.
A second painting within the same series is equally intriguing. Entitled Is It OK To Be Black? (2015-16), it again has the same blue background seen in the previous work, but this now represents the wall of the barbershop. In an interview with Michael Prokopow, Anderson recounted that he had visited a barbershop and taken several photographs which informed this painting. He explained that the premises had a long shelf which ran the length of the shop, with bottles, razors, and clippers on show, and that above this were mounted mirrors with photos and newspaper clippings of famous Black people. In the painting several photo-like rectangles are placed against the blue background, but all but two of the faces are so roughly painted that their identity is obscured. The two that are clear are those of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The bottles and other accessories are stacked like skyscrapers along the shelf, the patterns and colours contrasting with the plain background and the shimmering delineation of the faces.
A further group of paintings, the Welcome series, interrogates the tourist’s image of Jamaica. The first is Welcome Carib (2005). This is a difficult picture to describe and one which, I suspect, has several layers of meaning. It contains a semi-abstract, rectangular holiday setting in which several distant figures can be made out, while a large fan placed centrally indicates that comfort is one of the resort’s selling points. There is no sky visible: the grey concrete of a somewhat vague and indistinct building dominates the upper part of the painting. By contrast, the foreground is very clear, consisting of a strong metal fence which extends on all four sides, based on a star pattern of sixteen spokes with a horizontal line and the word ‘Welcome’ at the top. There is no way of knowing whether this is a truthful representation of an actual gated tourist site, but knowing how Anderson works, it seems likely that it is based on a photograph. Ironically, the gate has the opposite effect on the viewer to the sign’s intention, since it is clearly there to keep local people out of the site. In other works Anderson has continued to explore the visual possibilities of the gate with a partially abstract environment in the background. The most recent example, completed in 2023, is much darker in tone: the star-like shapes are now coloured black, white, and red, and behind them are open spaces through which rippling water can be seen, lit by a hazy moon on one side and a bright sun on the other. As with most images in this series, it convey a sense of exclusion. With no visible entry point, the barrier seems impermeable, evoking two worlds destined to remain isolated from each other.
The largest work on show, Passenger Opportunity (2024-25), is also one of the most ambitious. Comprising sixteen panels, thirteen feet tall and thirty-two feet wide, this mural takes its title from an advert placed in the Jamaican daily paper The Daily Gleaner in April 1948 which offered places on the Empire Windrush for £28 each (approximately £1,300 today). The panels show different aspects of the journey undertaken by many young Jamaicans. There are scenes of families gathering in the lush green environment of their old homeland, and later assembling around a dining table in their new home. This complex piece is about departures and arrivals, belonging and exclusion, but most of all the feelings of those British citizens who came here to be faced with unexpected hostility. The work conveys a powerful sense of loneliness and homesickness but also evokes strong familial bonds and a confidence that a new community can be built. It is a remarkable achievement, and one that deserves a wide audience.
This is a fine exhibition accompanied by an excellent, well-written catalogue. It is reassuring that, at a time when many artists are turning their backs on figurative painting, we still have a painter who can not only embrace this difficult genre but also combine the figurative with the abstract to express complex emotional states. Hurvin Anderson is an important artist with an interesting story to tell, one which is especially significant in our divided times. His beautiful paintings ultimately articulate hope for the future, despite the failures of the past.--Paul Flux
