Michael Armitage was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1984, to a Yorkshireman father and Kikuyu mother, and spent his childhood in East Africa before moving to London in 2000 to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and Royal Academy Schools. Now exhibited internationally and represented by White Cube, he is primarily known for his large-scale figurative works painted on traditional Ugandan lubugo cloth. Although Armitage’s images are deeply rooted in East African culture and folklore, they nevertheless continue to reference the great traditions of European painting.
Painter Michael Armitage was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1984, to a Yorkshireman father and Kikuyu mother and spent his childhood in East Africa. He immigrated to the UK in 2000, and received his BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2007) and a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools, London (2010). He is primarily known for his large-scale figurative works painted on Ugandan lubugo cloth, a dark brown fabric made from fig-tree bark, traditionally used by Baganda people as a burial shroud or in ceremonies. In his interview given to the RA Magazine in Spring 2020, Armitage shared that having come across the lubugo cloth by chance in one of Nairobi's markets in 2010, he discovered that, when stretched, primed and treated, the cloth took on many of the qualities of canvas as it is used in the West, while allowing a 'subtle subversion' of European artistic traditions (McConnell 2020).
Although Armitage’s images are rooted in East African culture and folklore, they also contain references to the great tradition of European painting. The iconography, compositional elements and colour combinations are often informed by the works of artists as wide-ranging as Francisco de Goya, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Egon Schiele. This dialogue with painters of the past is exemplified by the Flaying of Marsyas which builds on Titian's depiction of this mythical scene and depicts a bald man, wearing a printed shirt and surrounded by a mob, who brutally strip the skin from an innocent African. Armitage's paintings weave multiple narratives that are drawn from historical and current news media, internet gossip, and his own ongoing recollections of Kenya. The visual iconography of East Africa lies at the heart of his practice: its urban and rural landscape, colonial and modern vernacular architecture, advertising hoardings, lush vegetation and varied animal life. Undermining this rich colour palette and dream-like imagery, however, is a quiet exposition of Kenya's sometimes harsh reality: its politics (e.g. Kenya's 2017 presidential elections), social inequalities, violence and extreme disparities in wealth. In turn, Armitage reflects on the more absurd aspects of the everyday, commenting on both society and the surrounding natural environment – evoked with a lyrical and phantasmagorical vision. When talking about his work, Armitage also comments: 'Exoticism and 'otherness' is something that I think about a lot in my work. So what happens in a situation where your culture is changing, but you’re wanting to hold onto some things, when maybe the function of something is gone but you use it in your work out of some sense of identity? And what happens when that becomes a performance for somebody else, say within tourism, or for an international audience? You end up with a self-exoticising version of it. That's something I'm very aware of and concerned about when I'm making my work'. (A Q&A with... Michael Armitage, July 2017).
Armitage has been represented by White Cube since 2015, with his first UK solo exhibition, Inside the White Cube, taking place at its Bermondsey branch later the same year. In 2017, he held a solo exhibition Peace Coma at Turner Contemporary in Margate and in 2018 his works were shown at the South London Gallery. In 2019, Armitage took part in the 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times, and had a solo exhibition at MoMA, New York entitled Projects 110. Other solo exhibitions includes Accomplice at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town (2020) and Paradise Edict at the Haus der Kunst in Munich (2020–21). The latter showcased four groups of his work dating from 2014 to the present. For the first time, Armitage's work was presented in conversation with his predecessors: the show concluded with about seventy paintings and sculptures by 20th century East African artists, including Meek Gichugu, Jak Katarikawe, Theresa Musoke and Chelenge van Rampelberg. In 2018, Armitage was included in Apollo magazine's 40 under 40 Europe list, featuring the most talented and inspirational young artists. Armitage was also a recipient of the 2020 Ruth Baumgarte Art Award, a prestigious German art prize. His works were included in the recent seminal Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium (2020). Armitage's works are held in several UK public collections, including the Arts Council Collection and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Michael Armitage currently splits his time living and working between London, England and Nairobi, Kenya.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Michael Armitage]
Publications related to [Michael Armitage] in the Ben Uri Library