A soundtrack of rain sizzles on a tin roof, interspersed with snatches of music and radio voices struggling against the storm. The shiny tin slung overhead and the bare neoclassical walls compound the echoing reverb of the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. I want to sink to one of the rattan sofas grouped about the floor, close my eyes and drift to the noise of the sweltering hurricane season in the Caribbean. It’s enervating. I think of sweat glueing my body to the protective clear plastic cover of the sofa. Maybe they should turn the heating up, to complete the experience.
This is the opening that greets visitors to Alvaro Barrington’s Grace, his three-part Tate Britain commission. The length of the Duveen and its division into three sections invites a narrative approach, a journey in time as well as space. For now, we are in Grenada, in a kind of symbolic, schematic recreation of Barrington’s childhood home, living with his grandmother.
