HURVIN ANDERSON’S ARTISTIC TRANSLATIONS AT THE ARTS CLUB PICTURED: ANYWHERE BUT NOWHERE, INSTALLED AT THE ARTS CLUB, APRIL 2021. PHOTO CREDIT: MICHAEL TROPEA; COURTESY THE ARTS CLUB OF CHICAGO
By JACQUELINE LEWIS As The Arts Club prepared this past March to open its third exhibition since the arrival of the pandemic, Anywhere But Nowhere, by 2017 Turner Award nominee Hurvin Anderson, I sat down with the club’s Executive Director and Chief Curator Janine Mileaf to discuss Anderson’s new works, the artist’s ongoing barbershop theme, as well as the challenges involved with successfully mounting an international exhibition during the time of COVID-19. I was also fortunate to connect with Mr. Anderson for this interview, and he graciously added deeper insight to this exhibition in regards to his identity as a British-born artist, one step removed from his familial homeland in Jamaica.
By bringing the Jamaica and barbershop series together, he’s considering both his ongoing, formal aesthetic approach, while also thematically linking the two. The barbershop series has to do with the Jamaican diaspora in Britain. Hurvin is a UK–born artist with Jamaican heritage. While growing up in Birmingham, he went to barbershops with his dad. They were a sort of cultural, makeshift space that became a Jamaican hub for him. So they are a closed, interior space of Jamaican gathering within the UK. In contrast the Jamaican spaces depicted in Hurvin’s new paintings are all exterior landscapes. He wanted to bring together these two worlds and explore how they mirror each other in this new exhibition.
CGN: How did the Arts Club begin collaborating with Hurvin Anderson? Janine Mileaf: This exhibition has been on the books for quite some time. It was supposed to take place about a year ago, but the pandemic postponed it. I had met the Hurvin Anderson and did a studio visit in London a couple years a year ago, after which I offered him a show here. He graciously accepted. CGN: Can you give us an overview of the exhibition? JM: The exhibition includes two series coming together: brand new paintings on the subject of Jamaica and its sites of tourism, as well as ongoing work regarding barbershops. Hurvin’s barbershop work is very well known – it’s been going on since 2005 – but he’s made brand new, significant work in that series. 38 | CGN | Summer 2021
HURVIN ANDERSON, JUNGLE GARDEN, 2020, ACRYLIC, OIL ON LINEN 71-1⁄4 X 59-1⁄8 IN. COURTESY DE YING FOUNDATION PHOTO: RICHARD IVEY
