Meet Alvaro Barrington The Artist Working With Dev Hynes, Jawara Alleyne and NTS

On a Thursday afternoon, Alvaro Barrington is slumped on a rattan bench at Tate Britain. It’s as if he’s been lulled by the sound of rain hitting the corrugated steel roof above us, as well as the ambient soundtrack that courses through the gallery space. And his outfit is similarly relaxed: a cosy sweater and tracksuit bottoms that complements his unassuming personality. “I think of myself as a very lazy artist, even though I work all the time,” he says cheerfully, sinking deeper into the chair. “I’ve learned to embrace every part of every moment because a lazy conversation may inspire something five years down the line.”

This openness was integral to Grace, Barrington’s three-section installation on display at Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries until the end of January. For the show, supported by Bottega Veneta, the artist collaborated with over three dozen creatives including Jawara Alleyne, Dev Hynes and NTS’ Femi Adeyemi. “Painting can often be so much about just one person and the canvas, and so painters don’t necessarily know how to collaborate,” he says. “But I thought, ‘How does art show up in the Black community in a way that I understand?’ Even though I’m a painter, I see it through crocheting, braiding, multiple other ways.”

The corrugated roof, rain, music and benches reference Barrington’s childhood memories growing up at his grandmother’s house in Grenada. “My mom got pregnant with me when she was 17, and my grandma, like many grandmothers [in Grenada], was like ‘send him to me,’” he says. “That was something we took for granted in our community,” he says. “Everybody grew up with their grandma.” 

In the North Gallery, a boarded-up kiosk has been made to American prison-cell dimensions, with church pews facing the sculpture. The work draws from the injustices committed against Black men in 80s and 90s America. “Kids would go to buy a bag of chips from the store, and cops would arrest everybody who was at the corner assuming you were selling drugs with them,” Barrington explains. “A lot of the women in the community turned to church because the system felt so impossible.” 

Yet most striking of all is the three-metre high figure in the central rotunda, depicting Barrington’s lifelong friend Samantha. She is dressed in carnival attire, designed by Alleyne, and dances among steelpans and paintings reminiscent of various carnival traditions. “It doesn’t happen in many other cultures that a man or a woman can be in a bikini dancing in public, and everybody knows that’s their space to engage with their body however they want to,” says Barrington.