Hurvin Anderson was born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham, England in 1965 and his work references Afro-Caribbean life in the United Kingdom, with respect to his parents’ journey to England from Jamaica, as well as his own experiences of growing up in Birmingham in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2016, Arts Council England acquired a painting from his <em>Is it Okay to be Black?</em> series, which contemplates Black historical figures such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and in 2017 Anderson was nominated for the annual Turner Prize. His work is represented in numerous UK public collections including the Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection and Tate Collection.
Painter Hurvin Anderson was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in Birmingham in the West Midlands in 1965. The youngest of eight children and the only one not to be born in Jamaica, Anderson grew up feeling like ‘the English boy in the Jamaican conversation’, his imagination fired by tales of ‘the other place’ (Jackie Wullschlager, Hurvin Anderson: ‘I was the English boy in the Jamaican conversation', The Financial Times, March 2021). Anderson’s brothers were formative influences on his artistic development; Rupert drew and Claude made cartoons and also introduced him to photography. The Hayward Gallery’s 1989 touring exhibition The Other Story, curated by Rasheed Araeen also made a big impression, showcasing the work of black British artists Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling and Keith Piper, among others. The following year he enrolled in an Art Foundation course at Birmingham Polytechnic before studying Fine Art (painting) at Wimbledon School of Art in 1991. He graduated in 1994 and in 1998 completed a Masters in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London where he explored the relevance of figuration in a world dominated by abstraction and conceptual art. Since then, he has pursued both landscape and abstract painting, exploring his own relationships to place by recalling social history and memory (Hurvin Anderson, The Royal Drawing School). A turning point in his career came in 2002 when he was chosen to undertake a residency in Trinidad, which provided him with rich material to explore Caribbean post-colonial life.
Anderson’s paintings combine still life, landscape, and portraiture techniques. They often reference spaces of Afro-Caribbean life in the United Kingdom, with respect to his parents’ journey to England from Jamaica in the 1960s, as well as his own experiences growing up in Birmingham in the 1970s and 1980s. They explore spaces such as public parks, gardens, barbershops and domestic interiors, which function as sites for both social gathering and economic enterprise. These settings represent the artist’s personal and cultural memories of functional spaces and shared experiences of the Caribbean. Anderson often aims in his work to ‘create a new space’ where contradictory elements coexist. Rootstock (2016), for example, features an amalgamation of images of a mango tree from Jamaica and a pear tree from Britain, infused with memories of his brother ‘scrumping for apples’ as a child. His best-known works, the Barbershop series (2006-ongoing) are inspired by visits with his father to a barber who cut hair in his attic. The paintings convey the importance for the Afro-Caribbean community of these makeshift spaces, often in people’s homes (Elizabeth Fullerton, Hurvin Anderson Interview, Studio International, 27 April 2021). In 2016, Arts Council England acquired a painting from his Is it Okay to be Black? series, which contemplates black historical figures such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the ways in which their legacy is passed on through generations. In an interview with Studio International Anderson explains that ‘I was trying to make a painting about figures that were seen as influential to the black community in Britain. There was a sense that there was a side to take- either that of Malcolm X or Martin Luther King- and I wanted to bring the two of them together’ (Elizabeth Fullerton, Hurvin Anderson Interview, Studio International, 27 April 2021).
In 2017 Anderson was nominated for the annual Turner Prize. The following year he became the first artist selected for the TenTen Commission to create a unique, limited edition print to be shown in diplomatic buildings across the world. To create Still Life with Artificial Flowers Anderson worked with The Print Studio’s Kip Gresham and Alan Grabham to replicate sourced and saved fabrics and wallpapers reminiscent of his mother’s sitting room in Birmingham. In 2019 his work was included in Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers, curated by artist Zak Ové at Somerset House, London. The following year he was one of 36 artists who began their creative practice later in life to be featured in Received Wisdom at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens. In 2021 his work has been represented in a number of major museum exhibitions including the British Art Show at the Aberdeen Art Gallery, Mixing it Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery and Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now at Tate Britain. He has also held solo shows at Dulwich Picture Gallery (2006) and Tate Modern (2009).
Hurvin Anderson lives and works between London and Cambridge. He is represented by Thomas Dane Gallery in London and Michael Werner Gallery in New York and his work is held in numerous UK public collections, including the Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection and Tate Collection. In 2012, Anderson’s first permanent public art commission in the UK was an epic painting developed for the Renal Department, Barts Health NHS Trust, London.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hurvin Anderson]
Publications related to [Hurvin Anderson] in the Ben Uri Library