Michael Armitage, Royal Academy, review: sultry paintings, bizarre ‘contextualisation’
Few artists have had as rapid a recent rise as Michael Armitage. The Nairobi-born painter graduated from the Royal Academy Schools a decade ago; he now has an exhibition at the Royal Academy itself. In the interim, he was snapped up for representation by the big-hitting White Cube gallery, and in 2019 he saw his painting, The Conservationists, sell at Sotheby’s for $1.5 million (about £1.1m) from an estimate of $50–70,000.
Judging by the works on show at the RA, one can see what the fuss is about. Armitage paints seductively coloured, dreamlike scenes, often set against lush, tropical backdrops. Nightmarish is perhaps a better description than dreamlike; certainly it’s the case in Paradise Edict (2019), the painting after which the exhibition is named.
Armitage lures us into an abundant floral landscape (inspired by an island off the Kenyan coast), only to ambush us – as he routinely does – with what turns out to be a vision of humanity’s dark side. Armitage is a master of the sucker punch. In Paradise Edict, wraith-like figures are being grabbed by their ankles and tortured by other wraith-like figures. There’s always trouble in this artist’s paradise.
True to his roots (mother from Kenya, father from Yorkshire), Armitage today splits his time between Nairobi and the UK. The exhibition includes a set of paintings made in response to an opposition rally he attended during Kenya’s 2017 fraught presidential election campaign. In one of these, The Accomplice, first impressions are again deceptive. Three men appear to be dancing, in positions that call to mind Matisse’s masterpiece, The Dance. A slightly closer look, however, reveals that two of them are having a fight, while the other is leaping from a blazing fire. The trio are being observed by policemen who have zero interest in intervening.
Last year, Armitage was one of 10 artists included in the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition, Radical Figures, about the revival of figurative painting in the 21st century. What sets him apart are his materials and how he uses them. Armitage likes to apply oil paint in thin glazes, meaning his scenes have a fluidity that adds to their sense of uncertainty.
His real trademark, though, is the use of a support called lubugo (instead of canvas). This is a Ugandan cloth that has been produced for centuries from the bark of a fig tree. Lubugo is relatively fragile, and as a result, many of Armitage’s paintings have holes in them. This can be interpreted in several ways – one of them being the hollowness he says he finds in western views of Africa.
Armitage’s art comes recommended. Why, then, only three stars? Because the exhibition features a large, final section devoted to a ragbag of east African artists who influenced him. Armitage ends up being represented by 15 works, they more than double that. It seems bizarre. This, nominally, is his show, and Armitage is more than capable of filling the galleries himself. Every artist who ever lived has had influences – they don’t need flaunting.
Why do cultural institutions have to contextualise everything nowadays, when there’s the slightest hint of the (post-)colonial? Armitage’s paintings can speak for themselves.
From Saturday to September 19. Info: royalacademy.org.uk
