A brief encounter at a barbershop resulted in Hurvin Anderson making his most momentous body of work. In 2005, during a trip back home to Birmingham, the artist found himself at the salon frequented by his father, which he himself had visited as a child some 30 years previously. The functional and convivial aspects of the enterprise were less important to Anderson than the architecture of the room it occupied (the attic in the barber’s home). Perceived by him as ‘a space within a space’ it had monumental mirrors that extended around the compact interior, creating a kaleidoscopic effect that led, he said, to ‘a dramatic shift in pace’. It was this next-level dimension that he sought to capture in his first painting of the room, Barbershop (2006), which features at the Hepworth alongside three dozen other representations of the space made in the years since. Poignantly, the selection includes what will be the final work in the series, completed by the artist earlier this year.
