 |
| Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', 2008 & 'Untitled (Livingstone Road)', 2000 |
Approximately a
year ago, around the time I participated in the ‘If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words…’ group exhibition, it felt
like Birmingham was becoming a focus for some of my more interesting
experiences and activities. I hadn’t
visited the city properly for several years and was interested to be exploring
it once more and sampling the various attractions, cultural and otherwise, that
it offers. Attempts to revisit shortly
after for photographic expeditions were stymied by a combination of foul weather
and increasing difficulties with my dodgy old legs. However, as 2013 has progressed, (and partly
thanks to my physiotherapist), I’ve been able to head west increasingly, taking
in exhibitions, numerous sites of photographic or psychogeographic interest and
commencing a methodical exploration of Brum’s transport infrastructure in the
process, (as detailed in various posts).
 |
| Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, October 2013 |
I found myself there
yet again with friends the other weekend and, although Birmingham is only a
stone’s throw from our own towns, we decided to make an indulgent weekend of
it, treating ourselves to hotel rooms, extravagant breakfasts and the chance to
escape the humdrum routine for a couple of days. Many folk make Brum the butt of dismissive
humour but it offers much to the visitor, and is still Britain’s second city in
my view. It’s much easier to negotiate (and
afford), than London, is far more welcoming, and has a lot less ‘side’
generally. It may not be elegant or
quaint but isn’t without grandeur and actually provides a wide variety of moods
and visual experiences that engage me far more than traditional notions of
‘beauty’ or extravagance anyway.
Despite the bleak
weather, we spent a couple of very enjoyable days just hanging out and off
duty. The real highlight for me was a
visit to the Ikon Gallery to view Hurvin Anderson’s exhibition of paintings
entitled ‘Reporting Back’. I had a hunch this would be a good one
but in the event, it exceeded all expectations; taking its place on a short
roster of really impressive shows I’ve seen in recent months. Having viewed it on the Saturday, I returned
the following morning to reflect further on the paintings.
 |
| Hurvin Anderson, 'Northern Range', 2010 & 'Lower Lake', 2005 |
Anderson’s
origins lie in Birmingham’s Jamaican community, (he is British by birth),
although he has acquired an international reputation as a painter since leaving
the Royal College of Art in 1998. He
refutes further the wearisome notion that painting is dead, (still being
peddled in some quarters), and also the convention that Black art must be
clichéd, pigeonholed or superficially ‘right on’. His work shows a powerful commitment to, and
facility with, the medium of paint, but played out with due reference to the
context of photographic and appropriated imagery in which we all now float. Whilst rooted in the tradition, Anderson’s
painting feels completely relevant to now.
 |
| Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', & 'Miss Sylvia', Both 2004 |
 |
| Peter Doig, 'Pelican', Oil On Canvas, 2004 |
I now realise
that the art that captivates me most always carries an initial visual/
expressive punch, followed by a slower burn of reflection on the possible
themes or theoretical frameworks within it.
I want my mind to be stimulated but never to the exclusion of my senses
being seduced. It’s why I remain wedded
to painting, (or some hybrid of it), and why I responded to this exhibition immediately
I walked through the door. The most
obvious impression was of the similarities between Anderson’s painting and that
of Peter Doig. Both have a remarkable
facility with paint and employ abstract inventiveness within an essentially
representational framework, playing freely with the formal elements of picture
making. There is also an original take
on the idea of the tropical in both artists’ work. Anderson is more solemn and rather less
theatrical in his approach however, and presents a vision that is very much his
own. My good friend Suzie quite rightly
saw correspondences with Hockney and Hopper, whilst I was also reminded of
Michael Andrews (a perennial favourite) and the Euston Road tradition in general.
One might even draw some comparisons with Ewan Uglow. However, Anderson never fetishises the nailing down of
an objectivised image in the way that Uglow and the followers of Coldstream
did. ‘A Painter’s Painter’ is a
hackneyed label to apply to any artist, and yet…
 |
| Hurvin Anderson, 'Miss Sylvia' & 'Imperial', Both 2004 |
 |
| Michael Andrews, 'Good And Bad At Games', Screen Print & Oil On Canvas, 1964-68 |
The Artist draws
fully upon the Afro Caribbean experience, but does so in ways that manage to be
particular and personal but also universally human. Finding subject matter in both his native
Birmingham and The West Indies, he repeatedly explores his sense of
displacement and disquiet at never quite belonging in a particular place. This must surely be a powerful theme for any
diaspora, and not least for one with a shared memory of the multiple
displacements of slavery, colonialism, independence and subsequent migration to
these shores. Yet, as a middle class
white man, I gained just as much emotionally and intellectually from these
works and they reflect a kind of melancholy loss, alienation or recourse to
memory that is easily translatable into any culture. They may speak eloquently of ‘Black Experience’,
(which is not for me to judge), but encapsulate wider Human experience
too. As we viewed the paintings, we
decided they reflect the thoughts and feelings of an individual above all, and
that there is nothing as limiting or uncreative as a standard account for any
culture.
 |
| Hurvin Anderson, 'Untitled (Red Flags)', 2004, 'Northern Range', 2010 & 'Lower Lake', 2005 |
The locations Anderson
depicts are repeatedly imbued with disappointment or melancholy and of access
denied or promise unfulfilled. It is achieved
most overtly in his use of visual barriers, parallel to the picture plane,
through which various scenes are viewed.
These include fences, gates and decorative security screens, (typical of
the West Indies), and play both strong pictorial and powerful psychological
roles. Elsewhere, it is evoked more
obliquely through images that subvert the illusions of tropical or colonial
paradises and Victorian Utopianism, or depict figures rendered anonymous within
a newfound context. The latter category
includes blank faced ‘portraits’ of his sister and nephew, wrapped against the
cold in their Canadian home, having undergone (we assume) yet further
displacement.
 |
| Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', 'Peter's II', & 'Peter's III", All 2007 |
One of the
upstairs galleries at Ikon was dedicated to several of Anderson’s ‘Peter’s’ series of canvases, with which
he essentially made his name. Sharing
the same basic format, but sitting at different points on the figuration/abstraction
continuum, they are a powerful exploration of the psychologically significant
location of the Afro Caribbean barbershop (of an implied back-room variety it
seems here). With or without a figure in
the chair, these paintings are primarily about a specific arena for thoughts,
feelings and memories and somewhere that a marginalized community might enjoy a
coming together in safe surroundings.
They seem imbued with the stories and conversations that have unfolded
within the space, whilst being formally and pictorially inventive as visual
images.
 |
| Hurvin Anderson, 'Peter's: Sitters II', 2009 & 'Peter's IV (Pioneer)', 2007 |
At the risk of yet
another industrial length post, mention should also be made of German artist,
Nina Könnemann’s delightful video piece ‘Bann’
playing in the Ikon’s Tower Room. It
comprises candid glimpses of smartly dressed smokers grabbing a crafty fag in
various corners, doorways and dingy alcoves within the City of London. Whilst some are shown in the open, others
reveal their surreptitious presence only through puffs of smoke, disembodied hands,
(complete with cigarettes), reflections or just the discarded butts that remain
after their passing.
 |
| Nina Könnemann, 'Bann', Video, 2012 |
Könnemann
captures the fluctuating subculture that exists all around us at any hour since
the widespread indoor smoking ban took effect and the importance of those
snatched private, if damaging, moments in relieving the pressure of modern
urban life. It is poetic, ritualistic
and not without humour, (for instance one subject’s double take on spotting her
camera or the gloomy woman furtively chaining a second tab in the shadows). It is also an atmospheric elegy to the grey
and geometric corporate world of concrete, marble, steel and glass that these
City workers inhabit. Their rhythmic
exhalations of smoke just seem to add to the tarnished silvery miasma in which
they exist.
 |
| Nina Könnemann, 'Bann', Video, 2012 |
Leaving Ikon via its
well stocked bookshop, I picked up a copy of the ‘Reporting Back’ catalogue as well as books on the work of Beat Streuli and Christiane Baumgartner. The
last two are both artists who caught my eye in the ‘Metropolis: Reflections On The Modern City’ exhibition at
Birmingham’s Gas Hall earlier in the year.
It just went to emphasise that many of my most inspiring and enjoyable experiences over the last year have occurred in Brummagem.
 |
| Apologies; I Fear I Have Committed A 'Selfie'. |
Hurvin Anderson’s
exhibition, ‘Reporting Back’, and
Nina Könnemann’s video, ‘Bann’,
continue at Ikon Gallery, Oozells Square, Brindley Place, Birmingham, B1 2HS,
until 10 November 2013. Both are highly
recommended.
