by One of artist Alvaro Barrington’s earliest memories is of taking shelter in the “little shack in the countryside” where he lived with his grandmother in Grenada, with the rain beating on the tin roof and music playing. Now that simple protective roof has inspired a huge minimalist sculpture – hanging sheets of corrugated metal – that stretches the length of Tate Britain’s lofty south Duveen gallery.
We meet below, halfway through Grace, a huge new work by Barrington’s part of Tate Britain’s prestigious annual installation Commission. Soon, he says, there will be a rain soundscape and original music created by pioneering experimental artists including Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes and Femi Adeyemi, founder of maverick London radio station NTS.
It is the first step in a journey through what Barrington calls “his internal landscape”, as shaped by Frederica, Samantha and Emelda, his grandmother, sister and mother respectively. “I wanted to explore what I do [as an artist] regarding their work,” he says. “My mother got pregnant when she was 17 and my grandmother brought me in without birth. My mother lived abroad and when she returned my grandmother found ways to show her that she loved her. She covered the chairs with plastic, so the house didn’t change. She said: ‘No matter what, you have a house.'”
Barrington joined his mother in New York when he was eight, living there until he came to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in his 30s. Since graduating in 2017, his rise has been rapid by any standards. Although he describes himself as a painter, he is known for expansive projects that escape the traditional boundaries of the medium.
History is immigration and innovation: how do we find a country and then think of it as home?
Alvaro Barrington
The first canvases at Tate Britain are his signature thread paintings, where thread is sewn across the canvas to create abrasive explosions of colour. “They come from the women in my family sewing and crocheting,” he says. “That’s how they approached art: making pictures by putting fabrics together.”
In stark contrast to this representation of domestic space, Duveen’s central Rotunda explores women’s careers on a very public stage. As we speak, an aluminum sculpture of a dancer in a “beautiful mass”, the feathers and bikini costumes inspired by the Brazilian carnival, is being lowered into place by a forklift.. This is based on Samantha, a “sister” the artist has known for decades, dancing at the Notting Hill carnival. “At art school, there was a lot of talk about public space [being dominated by] men,” he recalls. “Coming from the Caribbean it made no sense to me. Millions of people attend the carnival and it is understood that if a woman is dancing alone that is her space.”
The sculpture is a representation of the freedom of body and kinship, between the safety of the artist’s early childhood and his adolescent experience in New York in the 1990s, which provokes playful reflections in the north gallery. Here, Barrington looks back at Rudy Giuliani’s time in charge of a police force infamous for its vicious persecution of the Black community. He recalls how “high fives” between children on the street could encourage accused gang members and mass arrests. But it is how this has affected his mother and other parents that he is investigating.
While the artist is celebrating belonging in the other spaces, here he examines how people deal with being brutally held back. The focal point is a corner shop kiosk built to the dimensions of an American prison cell. In a constant cycle of promise and denial, her shutters open and close.
A stunning stained glass work that lights the arch above is based on yarn painting and looks back to her grandmother’s textile work and the home security she created. It is remarkable how Barrington transforms the concept of home – a patchwork of family, community and care – as a semi-spiritual point of inspiration. “It brings my mom back to my grandmother, through the work I’m doing in relationship with her,” he says. “She’s the matriarch that holds everything together.”
It fits with the rest of Barrington’s work, which explores art and its own formative journey as a complex web of connections between self, community and culture. “My own story is that of a working-class immigrant,” he says. “It allows me to be an artist in different ways. The history of the globe is immigration and [its accompanying] innovation: how do we find land and then think of it as home? It means that as a painter I can look at the entire world history of art.”
Alvaro Barrington: Grace is at Tate Britain, London to January 26.
Grace under pressure: four things to look for in installation
This corner shop-cum-prison cell (above) addresses the neighborhood staple as a place of community but also danger. Barrington cites the killing of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, shot in the back of the head by an LA corner store owner over a misunderstanding over a juice bottle, as a terrible wake-up call for his mother’s generation.
True to the collaborative spirit of the carnival, this sculpture (above) based on the likeness of the artist’s sister Samantha, is adorned with jewellery, a ribboned outfit and nail art. The statue was partly inspired by Botticelli’s painting, The Birth of Venus, although its broad commanding stance is a far cry from the demure object of Renaissance desire.
In the central rotunda, the giant statue of a carnival dancer is surrounded by pictures of revelers (above). Barrington has stretched these on scaffolding that visitors must wind between as a street party. The artist’s interest in community experiences runs deep. His mother died when he was 10 years old. “When my mom died, some of her friends took me in,” he says. “I was raised by a community. That way of thinking is ingrained in me.”
Barrington teamed up with the workshop responsible for the windows in the Gaudí-designed Sagrada Familia cathedral to create the stunning stained glass works of the installation (above), including this one in which rudimentary geometries suggest that quilts are made and both Mondrian’s spiritual compositions.
