The National Gallery’s very own assistant curator and artist, Simon Tatum was one of 24 Caribbean artists recently represented in a new exhibition entitled Arrivants: Art and Migration in the Anglophone Caribbean which was curated by Dr. Veerle Poupeye (Jamaica) and Allison Thompson (Barbados). Tatum is the youngest featured artist.
To coincide with the opening of the International Museums Conference (7-10 November 2018), which was jointly hosted by Museums Association of the Caribbean, the University of the West Indies and the EU-LAC Museums Project, the Barbados Museum & Historical Society presented the exhibition.
Arrivants explores the diasporic nature of Caribbean society as documented and interrogated through its artistic production. The focus is on the Anglophone Caribbean at different points in time from the mid twentieth century to the present day and on the cultural impact of migration from and to the United Kingdom, North America and Europe, as well as the movements within the Caribbean and Central American region.
Tropical Forms, work contributed by Tatum, is an array of monotone paintings designed to act as organisms by adapting to the dimensions of their exhibition space and incorporating materials and references from the various locations they travel. The concept was created by Tatum during a residency in Leipzig, Germany, which was supported by the National Gallery. While in Germany, he learned that male Cuban contract workers were sent to Leipzig to work within the spindle factories because of a trade deal between Cuba and the German Democratic Republic. The Cubans spent limited time in Leipzig, but several of them intermixed with German locals and had children.
Other work featured in the exhibition, which comprises of a series of interventions into the traditional museum environment at the Barbados Museums and Historical Society, include renown Caribbean ‘Masters’ such as Stanley Greaves, Aubrey Williams, Phillip Moore, James Boodhoo, Karl Broodhagen, Eddie Chambers, and Ras Ishi Butcher, as well as contemporary Caribbean artists: Ewan Atkinson, Paul Dash, Francis Griffith, Caroline Holder, Nadia Huggins, Leasho Johnson, Marianne Keating, Winston Kellman, Kelley-Ann Lindo, Hew Locke, Kishan Munroe, Lynn Parrotti, Keith Piper, Sheena Rose, Veronica Ryan, Golde White and Cosmo Whyte.
The National Gallery supported Tatum’s travel to Barbados as part of the NGCI Creative Careers programme, where he had the opportunity to train with exhibition curators and the installation team and to meet other featured artists.
This exhibition is funded within the scope of the Horizon2020 EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project and facilitated by the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Plans are now underway to showcase the exhibition in the UK, before exploring opportunities to travel the collection within the region.
Artist Bio
Simon Tatum was born in George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, in 1995, and is also based there. He was educated at the University of Missouri (BA, 2017). His solo exhibitions to date are Discover and Rediscover (2016), at the University of Missouri and Looking Back and Thinking Ahead (2017), in the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. Various group exhibitions include Open Air Prisons (2016), LACE Gallery in Los Angeles, California, and Sense of Place (2018), Spinnerei Halle 18 in Leipzig Germany. He was part of the Caribbean Linked IV (2016) residency programme in Oranjestad, Aruba. Moreover, he currently serves as Assistant Curator at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands.