Beautiful monsters
The young Kenya-born, London-based painter Michael Armitage often makes beautiful images inspired by terrible things. Rendered on traditional bark cloth, his layers of paint fade trippily from one lush colour to another, from tangerine to purple, with the occasional jolt of green. The fluid figures gently shape-shift within his birth country’s twisting trees and melting hills.
Bad trip
Armitage knowingly works the exotic appeal of Gauguin’s Tahiti, with the nudes and flowers replaced by scenes of contemporary fascination from east Africa, including exorcisms, erotic dances and the lynching of those accused of witchcraft.
Real horror show
However, in Conjestina, his depiction of the middle-weight female boxing champion Conjestina Achieng, the horror gets full rein. The boxer herself recalls Gauguin’s compact nudes and Watteau’s Pierrot. Armitage gestures to her status within Kenyan media as a tragicomic figure following her mental breakdown, penury and hospitalisation. The demonic nuns and shagging baboons suggest anything but asylum.
Out of Africa
His paintings create a Kenya of the mind, based on a mix of observations from his own travels, childhood memories and what he finds on social media.
Michael Armitage: The Chapel, South London Gallery, SE5, to 23 February
