Hollybush Gardens is pleased to present Barricades, a solo exhibition of new work by Lubaina Himid featuring overpainted objects and furniture, which have been integral to her practice for the past three decades, including found wooden drawers, doors, a table, a shelf and a set of oars, alongside a large-scale abstract painting and work on paper. The title of the exhibition refers to a barricade as a means of protection or escape, and also the impetus to ‘make do and mend’, to improvise or repurpose objects and structures close at hand in times of need.
Barricades includes a group of works which expand on Himid’s ongoing Men in Drawers series, begun in 2014–15, in which found or discarded drawers are repurposed as supports for painted portraits of individual Black figures, and act as containers for lost and forgotten lives. Himid writes: ‘The drawers tell the story of people in search of home who constantly have to move in order to find it and as a result leave traces of themselves behind each time they leave a particular place.’
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Movement through and across bodies of water is a recurring theme throughout Himid’s practice. Here, six wooden oars, some unusually long, with variously shaped blades, all smooth from years of immersion, are hung horizontally on the gallery wall. Perhaps used for racing, or on working vessels, their primary function was to move people in a boat from one place to another. The blades and shafts feature painted and drawn images and motifs that form part of Himid’s visual lexicon, including a newt, cowry shells, domestic utensils, a surgical knot, lunar phases and an assortment of spinning tops, suggestive of motion
and change.
Himid’s overpainted objects, removed from their original context, assume new identities within the gallery space – she sets the scene for the viewer to interact, stepping in between dislocated doors, discovering hidden drawers and the patterned underside of an everyday shelf. She notes: ‘The ability to make something that can be moved or which itself changes or triggers a reaction or shifts the perception of something else is at the heart of what I do.’
Lubaina Himid: Barricades
Nov 1 – Dec 20, 2024
Hollybush Gardens
London, UK
