Having missed Michael Armitage's exhibition at the Royal Academy last year, I was determined to catch this one at White Cube Bermondsey. Armitage's figurative paintings have created quite stir, and it's obvious to see why on the evidence presented here. Armitage is of British and Kenyan heritage spending his time between Kenya and London. As such he negotiates and unites the spaces between Western art history, and the local Kenyan artists which have been influential on his work. One can certainly see the effects of the work of Gauguin, Goya, and possibly Watteau and Paula Rego in the colourful, strong narratives in his imagery. The Kenyan landscape and attendant wildlife feature strongly in his work. The animals inhabiting these works are often anthropomorphised, metaphors for humans and the folly and shortcomings of human behaviours. There is much personal commentary on the state of Kenyan politics and society mixed with local mythology and supernatural tales. The colours and tonal harmonies are just lovely. Taken from the local plantlife there are chalky, greens, blues and browns punctuated with fiery blasts of pinks, yellows and oranges all evoking the heat and beauty of the Kenyan terrain and fauna. I noticed that the surfaces of the paintings were scarred by being stitched together. They are made from Lubugo bark cloth, a fragile, culturally important material made of the tree bark of the ficus tree, usually reserved for the purpose of burial shrouds. This is quite fitting as Armitage presents much of his imagery as dreamlike tableaux, and certain pictures refer to death and the possibility of an afterlife. What I particularly admire about Armitage as an artist is his generosity of spirit, sharing his space in the limelight with his fellow, lesser-known (in the West at least), east African artists who have been instrumental in his own development. He did this last year at the RA, and does so too in this space, giving room to the sculptural ceramics of Seyni Awa Camara which I believe deserve a showcase of their own and will be the subject of my next post.
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