Overview
Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg presents Alvaro Barrington’s most recent series of works in the artist’s second solo exhibition in Austria. The exhibition’s title, On the Road (TMS), evokes a wide range of references that run through the exhibition, including motifs from Barrington’s personal and cultural history. The exhibition title also refers literally to the works themselves. First exhibited in Barrington’s 2024 solo exhibition at Tate Britain, they were subsequently expanded for the Notting Hill Carnival in 2025, installed on the Mangrove Sound Truck. Now, for its third iteration in Salzburg, this body of work is reimagined as collaged wall hangings. The paintings on burlap depict a variety of Carnival masquerade characters originating from Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago, and draw from the vocabulary of Kuba cloth patterns. Kuba textiles have served as ceremonial attire and currency in the Kuba Kingdom of Central Africa since the seventeenth century. In Barrington’s works, colourful abstract shapes are sewn into the material using a variety...
Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg presents Alvaro Barrington’s most recent series of works in the artist’s second solo exhibition in Austria. The exhibition’s title, On the Road (TMS), evokes a wide range of references that run through the exhibition, including motifs from Barrington’s personal and cultural history. The exhibition title also refers literally to the works themselves. First exhibited in Barrington’s 2024 solo exhibition at Tate Britain, they were subsequently expanded for the Notting Hill Carnival in 2025, installed on the Mangrove Sound Truck. Now, for its third iteration in Salzburg, this body of work is reimagined as collaged wall hangings.
The paintings on burlap depict a variety of Carnival masquerade characters originating from Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago, and draw from the vocabulary of Kuba cloth patterns. Kuba textiles have served as ceremonial attire and currency in the Kuba Kingdom of Central Africa since the seventeenth century. In Barrington’s works, colourful abstract shapes are sewn into the material using a variety of stitching techniques that hark back to traditionally gendered craft traditions, while also referencing the long history of reception within Western artistic traditions – notably in the work of Henri Matisse, who collected and hung Kuba textiles in his studio. ‘They testify to the enduring cultural exchanges among artists and the historic roots of trade,’ explains Barrington.
The paintings on burlap depict a variety of Carnival masquerade characters originating from Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago, and draw from the vocabulary of Kuba cloth patterns. Kuba textiles have served as ceremonial attire and currency in the Kuba Kingdom of Central Africa since the seventeenth century. In Barrington’s works, colourful abstract shapes are sewn into the material using a variety of stitching techniques that hark back to traditionally gendered craft traditions, while also referencing the long history of reception within Western artistic traditions – notably in the work of Henri Matisse, who collected and hung Kuba textiles in his studio. ‘They testify to the enduring cultural exchanges among artists and the historic roots of trade,’ explains Barrington.
