by Before we sit down to talk, Alvaro Barrington gives me a guided tour of his spacious studio in Whitechapel, east London. It stands on the site of one of the country’s first free schools for the poor, established in 1860. As we climbed the steps to the top floor of an ornate neo-Jacobean two-storey building which was once an assembly hall and gymnasium. , he speaks vividly about the waves of immigrant workers who settled and changed the area, from the French Huguenots in the 17th century to the Jewish, Irish and Bengali communities that followed.
“I think of myself basically as a working-class immigrant and Whitechapel fits that,” he says. “The long history of this planet is one of migration and exchange. That gave me the most freedom to conceptualize myself and my journey, so I feel at home here.”
At the age of 41, Barrington’s own experiences of migration and exchange are woven into his vividly expressive paintings, making him one of the stars of the modern art world. In a few weeks, after first attracting the attention of the London art cognoscenti with his MFA graduate show at the Slade art school in 2017, he will present his most important exhibition to date. Having been awarded the Tate Britain Commission, he follows in the footsteps of established artists such as Mike Nelson (2019) and Hew Locke (2022).
“It’s a big deal for any artist,” says London gallery Sadie Coles, who has hosted four solo exhibitions of Barrington’s work since 2019. provides.”
In a painted sweater, baggy shorts, white socks and sandals, Barrington exudes a sense of eternal calm that contrasts with the buzz of activity that surrounds him. Across several floors of a building next to the old schoolhouse, there are rooms full of paintings in progress, art materials and stacks of colorful fabrics, and a small army of young studio assistants are flowing with purposeful intensity.
A Tate Britain press release touts Duveen’s upcoming installation as a “major new work that addresses themes of place and belonging”. It’s taking shape in the school’s former gymnasium, but Barrington can’t discuss details ahead of the official opening. Instead, we repair to a quiet attic room and talk about everything else under the sun, from the importance of community to the rise of New York hip-hop.
I feel honored but I see [the Tate commission] more as an opportunity than an award
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, to a Grenadian mother and Haitian father, Barrington was raised in Grenada by his grandmother, before moving to Brooklyn when he was eight years old. His work is loaded with memories of the Caribbean landscape of his childhood – blood-red hibiscus flowers are a recurring motif – as well as references to pop culture and art history. His conversation, too, is free-ranging and full of names that don’t often appear in the same sentence – Willem de Kooning and Tupac Shakur, Joseph Beuys and Marcus Garvey, Claude Monet and Miles Davis – but they add up to a sort of cultural map of its many influences.
“Alvaro is there and draws on a number of different communities that don’t often come together in the art world,” says Coles, “His community is extended in the Caribbean, the hip-hop community in New York that he immersed himself in in Brooklyn, but also his own sense of belonging to an artistic community, whether that is Louise Bourgeois or her young friends who are also artists.”
Although Barrington defines himself as a painter, his subjects speak of an equally varied approach to image-making, from the yarn he sometimes stretches across his canvas as a tribute to his grandmother’s sewing skills to the concrete on which he narrates fragmented lyrics. from. the rich oral history of hip hop culture. He describes his approach as a form of visual “creating”.
After self-funding his way through college in New York, Barrington arrived in London in 2017 as a relative unknown, but his Slade graduation show changed all that. “It was shared that this was a very powerful and dynamic new voice,” says Coles. “Since he was older than most of the other students, his work had a highly developed autobiographical content as well as a unique formal signature that reflected that.”
Soon after, he was given his first solo show at MoMA PS1 in New York. “It was offered to me through a DM on Instagram,” he tells me, still in awe. He responded by recreating his London studio in its entirety in a New York gallery. His iconic approach to display continued with the 2019 show at Thaddaeus Ropac in London. Artists I Steal From, provocatively titled, one picture of his was situated among a constellation of his influences, including works by Philip Guston, Agnes Martin and Robert Rauschenberg.
“That was probably the most important show of my life,” he says. “It was really about putting me in context in terms of all these other artists. One of the things I’m interested in is how artists struggle to paint with meaning throughout the long history of painting. By studying their work, maybe I can borrow some of their solutions and change them.”
Since graduating, Barrington has found his own rhythm, creating elaborate floats and stages for the Notting Hill carnival, as well as funding related community projects. “Carnival is inclusive,” he says. “It’s a community celebration. I put my pictures on the air and a million people see them.” He has plans to turn the old schoolhouse into a hub for emerging artists as well as a place where the local community can feel welcomed and included.
More interestingly, Barrington has redefined the usual relationship between artist and gallery to an astute degree. Currently, he has nine galleries representing him worldwide, including three in London and three in New York. “His approach is aimed at maximizing every opportunity available to him,” says Coles, “but there’s also a strategy at work, where each gallery deals with a different aspect of his work. I had his hibiscus and carnival paintings, and Blum in Los Angeles is very much about urban subject matter with a hip-hop influence.”
Hip-hop, Barrington says, was the soundtrack to his young life and remains his most important formative influence. For Blum’s first show, one of his heroes, Ghostface Killah of Wu-Tang Clan, performed on a pop-up stage. Ghostface’s song title All That I Got Is You is tattooed on his left arm.
“Growing up in Brooklyn, hip-hop let me know that other people had experiences with me, too,” says Barrington, growing visibly older. “Biggie, Tupac, Ghostface – those guys saved my life. They are my north stars and there is a part of the Tate Britain show where I admit that. That’s all I can say about it.” He pauses for a moment, as if lost in memory. “I remember when I was a kid listening to Children’s Story by Slick Rick and I can say that frankly there would be no Tate Britain show if he hadn’t made that record.”
When I ask Barrington how he felt when he landed the Tate commission, his response is typically thoughtful. “I felt honored, but I saw it more as an opportunity than an award. And with every opportunity, there’s also the bigger question, what does this mean?”
So what does it mean for him? He pauses for a long moment. “Well, I’ve lived in London for almost ten years, but I think of myself as an American. Then there is the fact that I grew up in Grenada, which is part of the Commonwealth of the United Kingdom. I remember seeing the Queen’s face on a bill for the first time when I was five years old. So the first question is, how do I relate to all this and how do I explore it? The Tate show is a great opportunity to think about all that. That’s the exciting part.”
