The unreliability of memories

Hurvin Anderson (born 1965) was the youngest of eight children and the first of his emigrant Jamaican family to be born in England. His artistic work is based on his own (childhood) memories and English and Jamaican cultural idiosyncrasies. In his color-intensive paintings, Anderson blends places, people, and memories to reveal the unreliability of human memory and the complexity of cultural heritage. In Great Britain, his paintings of barbershops, which Caribbean immigrants set up in their apartments and which became centers of social life, are particularly well known. The exhibition, which offers an overview of Anderson's entire oeuvre, is not conceived chronologically, but according to various themes that the painter worked on simultaneously over the years. A separate room displays paintings that have never been seen by the public before. Hurvin Anderson, the artist's first major solo exhibition with around 80 exhibits, will be on display at Tate Britain in London from March 26 to August 23.

A highlight of the exhibition is the British premiere of Anderson's monumental work Passenger Opportunity (2024-5), inspired by two murals painted by Carl Abrahams in 1985 for Norman Manley International Airport in Jamaica. The 24-part work, which serves as a loose historical record of emigration from Jamaica to the UK in the 1940s to 1970s, is reworked with new historical narratives about the relationship between the UK and the Caribbean. Hurvin Anderson studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London in the 1990s. In 2017, he was shortlisted for the prestigious Turner Prize.