Hurvin Anderson

Painter Hurvin Anderson was born in 1965 in Birmingham, United Kingdom, to parents of Jamaican heritage. Hurvin was largely raised in the Caribbean before his family relocated back to the United Kingdom. He earned his BA with honors in painting from the Wimbledon School of Art in 1994, and completed his MA at the Royal College of Art in 1998—both schools being located in London, where he continues to live and work today.

Much of Hurvin’s oeuvre addresses concepts of memory, culture, history and, on a more personal level, his own experiences with identity through his dual experiences between the United Kingdom and the Caribbean. Although his painting style could be understood as representational, and he often uses photographs as source material, he frequently disrupts their legibility by overlaying abstract patterns, thus fragmenting the overall image. Through this technique, he is able to destabilize understandings of the work, and conceptually bring to the fore ideas of the inconsistency of memory and perceptions of history.

Hurvin has been the recipient of numerous residencies and scholarships, including the Caribbean Contemporary Arts Residency Programme, Trinidad; Alkazzi Travel Award, New York; and the William Booker Travel Scholarship, Philadelphia. He has had solo exhibitions at both the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York—his first solo show at a museum in the United States—and Tate Britain, London; and his works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Galleries, London; and the British Council.