Tate Britain, London
Seventy years of tumultuous to-and-fro between grey Britain and the golden Caribbean, belonging and exile, power this crucial, enthralling show
Exhilarating, mighty, radical, tender, as disturbing as it is beautiful, Life Between Islands is a revelation from first to last. It follows 70 years of tumultuous history through art. Agonising departures and brutal arrivals, kindness, cruelty and community, uprising, oppression and unceasing injustice: all are carried in powerful films and photographs, spectacular sculptures and paintings, portraits sketched on police stop-and-search reports, even a walk-in front room where Joyce, the imaginary inhabitant, recreates her old home down to the crocheted doilies and velour map of Saint Vincent.
Playing on the vintage telly is Horace Ové’s 1976 classic Pressure, the first feature film by a black British director, following the teenager Tony, born in Britain to parents from Trinidad, through the cycle of educational deprivation, poverty, racism and eventual unemployment that grinds on today. The Notting Hill setting appears throughout the show – 60s photos of black-white couples snogging outside the Piss House pub, and carnival in full flourish, until its violent suppression by police in the 80s – depicted in Tam Joseph’s stark painting of black helmets and riot shields closing in on a single costumed man, hunted to oblivion.
