Migrations: Journeys into British Art at Tate Britain – in pictures

Go West Young Man (1987) by Keith Piper Migrations sees British art and identity as a 500-year dialogue with Europe, America, the Commonwealth and ex-colonies Photograph: Tate Portsmouth Dockyard (c1877) by James Tissot Like his friend Whistler (another incomer, from America), Tissot enjoyed painting water. For him, water was the site of human drama, choices and departures. Here, a Highland sergeant sits between two women in a skiff. Two ships behind echo the choice he is treacherously making as he turns from his plaid-shawled companion to a Renoir-ish lass lifting her face to his Photograph: Tate Between the Two My Heart is Balanced (1991) by Lubaina Himid This painting by a Tanzanian-born artist reworks Tissot's Portsmouth Dockyard. Himid got rid of the harbour setting and military male: her women sit either side of a pile of papers – which possibly represent other lost migrants. "Two women in a small boat tearing up navigation charts," Himid has explained. "How many died, crossing the water?" Photograph: Tate Jews Mourning in a Synagogue (1906) by William Rothenstein Rothenstein, who was born in 1872 and whose German-Jewish father migrated to Bradford to work in textiles, wanted to be part of the middle class of English art. In 1906, the Whitechapel Art Gallery's exhibition of Jewish art made religion the touchstone of Jewish identity, as in Rothenstein's painting Jews Mourning in a Synagogue, but claimed that Jewish artists identified themselves completely with England, with no distinctive thought or differentiation of artistic sentiment Photograph: The estate of Sir William Rothenstein/Bridgeman Art Library Photograph: The estate of Sir William Rothenstein. All Rights Reserved 2010 / Bridgeman Art Library Jews at Prayer (1919) by Jacob Kramer Ten years later, Jewish artists used avant-garde techniques to paint a far more conflicted, complex picture of English art, as well as of English-Jewish identity Photograph: Estate of John David Roberts. By courtesy of the William Roberts Society In the House of My Father (1996-7) by Donald Rodney Migrations also redraws the parameters for the larger question: what is British? Photograph: The estate of Donald Rodney Mrs Carl Meyer and Her Children (1896) by John Singer Sargent Like 'British' blood, many of the works in Tate Britain's collection have in some sense come from somewhere else Photograph: Tate Static (film still, 2009) by Steve McQueen Like languages, diseases and the alphabet, through trade, invasion or colonisation, art migrates Photograph: Tate Bismullah (1988) by Rasheed Araeen At the heart of this show is mobility – social, conceptual, physical, emotional, imaginative Photograph: Tate