Michael Armitage : Pathos and the Twilight of the Idle

Rich and radiant, Armitage’s textured paintings on Ugandan bark cloth speak to the change and upheaval of East African society

Michael Armitage (born 1984) makes large-scale oil paintings on lubugo (bark cloth) that possess a seductive artistic beauty. With their expressive figures jutting against shallow, undefined backgrounds, they generate an uneasy atmosphere and appear gloomy, sometimes even disturbing. The British Kenyan painter masterfully interweaves stories and themes from his East African homeland with international artistic traditions. The works brought together in this catalog, Pathos and the Twilight of the Idle, tell of the fragility of various political, social and psychic conditions. In this oversized paperback folio, Armitage’s paintings and drawings are displayed in a large-scale format, inspired by how the works were presented amid the modernist architecture of Kunsthaus Bregenz. Supplementing the illustrations is an extensive conversation between Armitage and Thomas D. Trummer, in which the artist offers deep personal insight into his creative process.