“Memory is the trigger. I will start from an idea about a place.”
Evoking a reminiscent expression of Jamaican suburbia, Hurvin Anderson’s After a Road to Rome I from 2006 merges fragments of figuration and abstraction, offering a dislodged psychological topography of conjoined memories and histories. Celebrated for his exploration of the politics of leisure spaces, ranging from barber shops, bars, beaches and housing estates, Anderson boldly recalls the art historical lineage of Impressionism – the great bastion of idyllic leisure pursuits in paint, and yet conflates it with a profoundly post-colonial dialogue. After a Road to Rome I is a mature early work and the first iteration from a seminal series of four paintings that began during Anderson’s residency at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London in late 2005. For the culminating exhibition of his residency, several paintings, including After a Road to Rome I referenced a classical landscape by Nicolas Poussin titled Landscape with Travellers Resting, Known as A Roman Road dated 1648, and housed in the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s own collects ion. Taking and revising the visual politics of thoroughfares – roads either advancing towards or away from an almighty capital – Anderson depicts St Catherine Parish in Jamaica; an industrial centre of urban advancement only second to Kingston, and the home of one of his seven siblings. Having most recently travelled to Jamaica in 2003, Anderson painted in South London largely from memory, focusing on the character of the neighbourhood’s built environment at various t.mes s of the day and night.
Under the veil of darkness, delicate marks with fine brushwork render unfinished housing and dense rainforest foliage soaked in diaphanous washes of inky black and emerald green, enveloping the scenery with a surface thinness that encourages the composition to drift off into the zone of memory. A perennial sense of distance or detachment exists in Anderson’s mark making. As the foreground dissolves into a melancholic cascade of pigment, Anderson deliberately places the scene just beyond the viewer’s reach. Creating an unattainable moment, the spectator is not present, and never will be. This compositional gap between viewer and subject intensifies the sense of distance and nostalgia, further emphasised by Anderson’s use of source imagery. Becoming second-hand interpretations of first-hand experiences, Anderson captures something only partially expressible, whereby the threshold between past and present is suspended between recognition and disconnection. An expert in constructing liminal space, Anderson’s working method recalls the close bond the artist forged with his teacher, Peter Doig, at the Royal College of Art. While Anderson’s work is more politically charged, the links between his and Doig’s artistic trajectory are palpable. Anderson and Doig both utilised the Caribbean landscape to grapple with romantic notions of memory and the outsider, and despite its nocturnal nature, the present work is rendered with a celestial translucency that recalls Doig’s creative output.
Born in England to Jamaican parents, Anderson's works delve into the intricate mental landscapes that explore his personal connection to his Jamaican heritage. This exploration is rooted in the broader historical context of the Windrush generation, the wave of Caribbean migrants who arrived in Britain between the late 1940s and mid-1960s. The Britain that greeted them was often far from welcoming – a reality Anderson’s parents likely faced when they settled in Birmingham. Barred from white churches, pubs, and social spaces, these migrants established their own communal hubs – informal leisure spaces where they could briefly escape the pressures of urban life. Such spaces became vital sites of entertainment and social cohesion, offering sanctuary and connection amidst an often hostile environment. As Jonathan Watkins notes, “instead of riots and violence we see quiet, relatively empty locations. These are the streets, parks and other public (in-between) places where the artist as a young man walked and met with friends, played football or simply hung around. They haunt him, like the sun, sea and palm trees of the Caribbean, and he returns to them through an artistic practice that is knowingly nostalgic” (Jonathan Watkins, “Foreword,” in Exh Cat., Birmingham, Ikon Gallery, Hurvin Anderson: reporting back, 2013, p. 9).
“There was a constant discussion about the Caribbean, and in particular Jamaica, a discussion that I felt I was merely an observer of, rather than a participant in the paintings. I think that this feeling of being “the observer” almost sets the tone in the paintings. There’s always a kind of disconnection, there is always a sense of distance in the work. It is as if you are always looking from behind or through something, you are never actually in the centre”
© Hurvin Anderson. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024
Uniquely conjuring highly mnemonic scenes through the documents of memory itself in which photographs germinate and breed variation, Anderson’s landscape genre is test.mes nt to an artist who can masterfully pull from art history as much as he pushes the boundaries of contemporary painting. More memoryscape than landscape, After a Road to Rome I is a pictorial reckoning on identity in flux; a painting that speaks of an artist reflecting on a heritage that stretches from Britain to Jamaica.