Tate Britain to Stage First Major Survey of Hurvin Anderson’s Career

In Spring 2026, Tate Britain will stage the first major survey exhibition of British artist Hurvin Anderson. Bringing together around 80 works, the show will span the artist’s entire career, from formative work to the present day, including a room of never-before-seen paintings. This exhibition confirms Anderson’s standing as one of the most important contemporary painters of his generation, highlighting his deep-rooted engagement with traditions of British landscape painting and his atmospheric use of composition to explore markers of identity.

Through colour-drenched landscapes and interiors, Anderson’s work weaves back and forth across the Atlantic, between the UK and the Caribbean. These works reflect on his experiences of belonging and diaspora, evoking a sense of, as he puts it, “being in one place but thinking about another”. The artist was the first member of his family to be born in England, after his father emigrated from Jamaica in 1961.

The exhibition will follow a thematic journey through the artist’s 30-year practice, reflecting his tendency to loop back and forth through time. Early portraits and studies depicting family members will set the scene of his boyhood, including Bev (1995), a double portrait of his sister, and Hollywood Boulevard (1997), an image of Anderson as a child standing beside his father. In these compositions, the artist plays with time to invent imagined familial support systems and transitory memories.

A key development in Anderson’s visual language will be explored through the Ball Watching series (1997-2003). Derived from a photograph of friends in Handsworth Park in Birmingham, the artist transforms a recognisable image of Englishness into a tropical locale by layering one location onto another. To contextualise the artist’s childhood and adolescence in 1970s and 80s Birmingham, the acclaimed 1986 film essay Handsworth Songs by Black Audio Film Collective will be screened outside the exhibition.

Significant attention is given to Anderson’s re-imagining of public spaces, particularly in his prolific Barbershop series (2006-2023). These works reference a period in the 1950s and 60s when Caribbean immigrants created make-shift barbershops in their homes. The series will be shown alongside the Peter’s series (2007-9), including Peter’s Sitters II (2009), as well as recent works such as Skiffle and Shear Cut (both 2023).

The exhibition also examines the artist’s use of fencing or grilles to distance the viewer, a theme explored in the Welcome series and Country Club: Chicken Wire (2008). This visual device acts as a remnant of racialised and social segregation. In a shift towards more direct engagement with cultural history, the painting Is It OK To Be Black? (2015-6) features semi-abstracted images of key figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, subverting the gaze of the viewer.

A major highlight will be the UK debut of Anderson’s monumental Passenger Opportunity (2024-5), a 24-panel piece inspired by murals painted by Carl Abrahams in 1985 for Jamaica’s Norman Manley International Airport^. Additionally, Tate will show works from Anderson’s Jamaican hotel series, including Grace Jones (2020) and Ashanti Blood (2021), depicting derelict hotels reclaimed by the natural environment.

The exhibition runs from 26 March to 23 August 2026.