One of artist Alvaro Barrington’s earliest memories is of sheltering in the “little hut in the country” where he lived with his grandmother in Grenada, while the rain pounded on the tin roof and music played. Now that simple protective roof has inspired a huge minimalist sculpture – hanging sheets of corrugated iron – that … Read more
Years ago I saw a work by the British-Jamaican artist Donald Rodney that I have never forgotten. It was a house with dark shadows on the wall, composed of hospital X-rays. In front of it sat a faceless figure, little more than torn clothes, held up by a broken tree that rose like a spine … Read more
Before we talk, Alvaro Barrington gives me a tour of his expansive studio in Whitechapel, east London. It stands on the site of one of the country’s first free schools for the poor, founded in 1860. As we climb the stairs to the top floor of an ornate two-story neo-Jacobian building that was once an … Read more