Author Archives: Tina Hanson

Migration is not a theme that contemporary British art occasionally visits. It is one of the material conditions that produces it. Artists move; so do the funding streams, the studio rents, the gallery leases, the collectors, the curators, the fabricators, … Continue reading →

When I ran a gallery in Manchester, I spent more time writing about art than showing it. Not criticism — that would have been a pleasure. I mean the other writing: project narratives, outcome reports, case studies, impact statements, social … Continue reading →

Ask where contemporary British art comes from and the standard answers point to art schools, prizes and a handful of London rooms. Ask who actually makes it, and you get a different story. Migrants and their children are the artists, … Continue reading →

Migration shapes contemporary British art in three connected ways: it changes who makes art here, it changes what the art is about, and it decides who gets paid. That is the short version. The longer version is what this article … Continue reading →

Migration is not a theme in contemporary British art; it is a structural condition of it. The artists who have kept studios open in Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent over the past two decades have often arrived from elsewhere: from … Continue reading →

Migration isn’t a theme you can hang on a gallery wall. It’s a material condition of art-making in Britain today—something that shapes the very stuff of production, not just the subject matter. The movement of bodies across borders, the friction … Continue reading →

What Migration Actually Does to a National Art Scene Migration isn’t a curatorial theme. It’s a structural condition of British art, and it has been for decades. When we talk about how migration shapes contemporary British art, we’re not talking … Continue reading →

I first clocked the problem at a funding panel in 2019. We were reviewing applications for Arts Council England’s Project Grants. Across the table, a curator I respected described a forty-three-year-old painter as ’emerging.’ The artist had been making work … Continue reading →

Migration isn’t a theme in British art. It’s a structural condition. Walk through studios in Birmingham, Leicester, or the outer boroughs of London and the question is rarely whether an artist’s work addresses movement. It’s how directly they’re willing to … Continue reading →

When we talk about British art, we usually mean London. The galleries, the auction houses, the biennial circuit. But the real story of British art over the last seventy years is a story of movement—of artists, ideas, and whole communities … Continue reading →