Interview with Artist Michael Armitage | S10, EP9 DIALOGUES PODCAST

My name is Michael Armitage. I'm an

artist and the founder of the Nairobi Contemporary Arts Institute.

From David Swerner, this is Dialogues, a podcast about artists and the way they think.

I feel like there should be a level of freedom of thought that one is afforded by walking into a space with art on it.

I think it should be a space for very difficult things. It should be a space

difficult things. It should be a space for awe, for wonder. It should be a space for for us to talk about all of it. All the positive things, all the

it. All the positive things, all the negative things. You know that that's

negative things. You know that that's culture.

I'm Helen Molsworth, your host for this season. Every episode features a

season. Every episode features a conversation about what it means to make things today.

Hey everybody, Helen here. I'm so

excited to bring you today's episode.

It's a conversation with the Kenyan British painter Michael Armmitage who just opened a solo exhibition at the Palazzo Gratzi in Venice. We dug deep into how he makes his paintings, his incredibly unique approach to his

subject, and much more. I hope you enjoy it.

Welcome, Michael. I I know that you're installing your big new show at the Palazzo Grant in Venice, and so I'm just going to jump right in. Everyone who

talks about your work starts with the ground of the work. And I can't also not start with the ground of the work because I think it's sort of essential

to what you're doing. And that is your use of this bark claw called lubo. Am I

pronouncing that correctly?

Yeah, that's correct. And it's my

that's correct. And it's my understanding that it's the bark of a ficus tree and that it's something you work quite heavily and that the the

texture of it is never pure or smooth like there's bumps and holes and fissures and little moments of of it almost looks like it's being stitched

together and it retains all these kinds of this all this incident.

And I guess I just want to begin with a basic question which is what does it mean to use a ground or a support that retains

its proximity to the natural world in a way that let's say Belgian linen does not.

Proximity is a good word. Um for me the initial proximity that I wanted was a cultural one. I wanted the work to be

cultural one. I wanted the work to be very much from the beginning grounded and rooted in East Africa. I wanted to be able to work on images and and not

have to deal with let's say as the first thing one sees when you come to a painting or when thinking about a painting not have to deal with certain aspects of western art

history. For me that that came through

history. For me that that came through the mark that came through making particular gestures and then you're in the world of um expressionism,

abstract expressionism and with the subjects that I was interested in my own history, the places that I wanted to engage with

culturally were predominantly East African. And I was interested in being

African. And I was interested in being able to take from a western art history and painting history to take from it but

not have to subject all the ideas that I was interested in to be subservient to that history. And so by changing the

that history. And so by changing the ground it was a way of immediately starting in a different place in a

different cultural context. um to speak to using the the the ground and as you say something that's not so processed

and that has very much a a natural texture to it. It's a bark so it has the grain of the wood and it works exactly like that. one way it's extremely strong

like that. one way it's extremely strong and the other way it's a little bit more fragile and so it started to provide a lot of challenges um given that I was used to painting on a very processed

smooth flat surface being linen or cotton canvas um it changed how I painted it's changed how I've thought about painting you know that very

practically if you use a brush loaded with paint and it's not thin down paint you end up picking up the grain of the wood so you get a staccato that runs across the surface,

which is useful in some cases, but at points where I wanted a little bit more fluidity in the mark making or a more solid shape or area of color, I really had to begin to thin down the paint to

be able to to do that and find different ways of making marks to what I had previously previously used and made. as

something that started as a conceptual shift in the work. It really changed everything about about my paintings from then on. And the other thing that it did

then on. And the other thing that it did was made me acutely aware of surfaces in other painters work. Um I started thinking and looking at for example an

artist that I had looked a lot at already but never really considered their surface was Tishon. Um, and then when when you look at his paintings, there's there's actually a lot of stitching. There's a lot of seams in the

stitching. There's a lot of seams in the in the paintings. There's sometimes he uses um different grains, different types of weave, and that changes what he

can do with the paint as well. So, um I I just wouldn't have noticed that if I hadn't myself been playing around with different types of grounds,

right? Oh, that's so great. If you'll

right? Oh, that's so great. If you'll

bear with me, I've got a couple of more like of these like nerdy formal questions. I'm going to kind of back

questions. I'm going to kind of back back into the subject matter because one of the things I find so arresting about your paintings is that they really don't

look like anybody else's paintings and I've been looking at them a lot and thinking about what what that means and why I'm compelled by them. And another

thing that you do, this isn't always the case, but it it is something that happens a lot in your work as far as I can see, is that you often use a kind of

thick calligraphic line almost to me feels almost like a woodcut to outline bodies. And then the bodies are often

bodies. And then the bodies are often indicated in sort of flat planes of color. Like bodies become shapes. And

color. Like bodies become shapes. And

yet your faces are almost always like exquisitely modeled and quite individuated.

And I was curious whether or not you feel you are treating the body and the face very differently

as you are painting your figures.

Yeah. At at different times I've um wanted different things. I would say probably between about seven to 10 years ago, I wasn't interested in trying to

make a figure with a recognizable sort of portrait. But then um I made a

of portrait. But then um I made a painting called Conestina um after a boxer and it became important as it was about her that I tried to make some sort

of likeness and and that really opened a door for me. Um, and it just happened that then I was working on a series of election paintings where again I wanted

faces to be recognizable, the people that were there to be in the paintings.

So I I started to work the paint the the portraits up more. before Condestino I there aren't many paintings that have

such a recognizable recognizable face but it became uh it became kind of from from like ju just as a way of identifying somebody and the narrative

of the painting that's that's kind of why why I started to do that um and then with different paintings that's kind of either

been important or less important um and for example example there's a painting that I made which was of a series of men sleeping interlocking in a holding cell

and the painting is called holding cell and that's that's a much more suggestive um type of of kind of rendering of a

face or or figures. Um, and again that was because there's something about the mass of bodies where it's almost not

important that they're they're the way they're treated isn't as individuals.

And so I was kind of interested in in trying to have something of that ambiguity of the figure in in the representation of the figures as well.

Um, more recently I'd made a painting, a series of paintings around the migrant route through the Sahara and up into the Mediterranean. And again, it felt

Mediterranean. And again, it felt important that those were faces that were recognizable.

Some directly recognizable to the source material that I was painting from, but others the faces are rendered to a a quality as if they could be somebody even if they weren't. And again, that

that felt important because it was trying to create visibility for people that are turned into statistics and that are very much dehumanized by political rhetoric. Maybe what you're referring to

rhetoric. Maybe what you're referring to is also often the use of the underpainting, what goes down first. Um,

and thinking about in instead of having a strong outline or drawing the figure into existence, a type of illustration where I am generally more interested in how colors play off each other. And

sometimes you can get two colors together and they're quite aggressive and that can give you a shape. It can

give you depth. It can give you form just through whatever that optical thing that happens when they're together is.

Whereas you don't actually need to do that tonally. Sometimes that can just be

that tonally. Sometimes that can just be the way that colors live together. So

yeah. So so often I'll try and create depth through color as opposed to tone.

I'm really glad we got into color because I have a kind of I literally in my notes I have like sub question on palette. I'm kidding.

palette. I'm kidding.

Which hand because your palette is so extraordinary and I actually um there's a wonderful essay in uh in a book from

your Kunal Basil catalog and the writer is trying to convey the color and he writes

putrifying green, sullen olive, dispic purple and I I was both in awe I was in awe of both of you. One, this writer

just desperately trying to get the words to convey what is really a very unusual palette that you are using cuz the palette doesn't seem cued to like what I

would call like retail color or like pop art. It doesn't seem cued to um the kind

art. It doesn't seem cued to um the kind of postminimalist, you know, like very well behaved colors that work well together. you know, there's something

together. you know, there's something going on in your palette that's that is agitated. I think you just used the word

agitated. I think you just used the word colors that sit almost aggressively with one another. I wonder if you could talk

one another. I wonder if you could talk a bit about your color sensibility and your palette.

I love that you pulled out I think that's a Nick Hatful quote. the artist.

He's a dear friend of mine and um and an amazing writer, an amazing artist as well.

But and funnily enough, he he's the the first person that articulated the importance of tension in a painting

to me as well. Just we studied together and has spoken a lot about painting together and that really um resonated when when when he first mentioned about

tension. tension is almost the exact

tension. tension is almost the exact opposite of something academic. You

know, that there's something unresolved.

There's something that can't be held down. It can't be put in a box. And the

down. It can't be put in a box. And the

importance of that in painting and the importance in having something that that basically stays with you, but also gives you space to maneuver is something that

I'm drawn to in other painters work. a

sense of tension within the relationships between things within a painting. And my relationship to color

painting. And my relationship to color has evolved a little bit. I think at the beginning um when I was thinking about things like the ground and I was setting out these the cornerstones the

conceptual cornerstones and foundations of my practice a lot about Goan as this kind of godfather of exoticism as he's been kind of placed as

and wanting some of that to undermine an idea of authenticity in what I was doing.

And so I started thinking about having a relationship to artists work like that.

But then over time I began to be more interested in how the color was actually functioning in the paintings and less interested in a kind of lineage of color or something like that. It became more

more interesting to me what the painting was doing. And so so I started to think

was doing. And so so I started to think about the colors and feel my way through colors through the paintings I was making. And so it

becomes now it's quite difficult for me to attribute any particular influence or reference to or or particular ideas to

some of the color decisions. But I do think color can change the narrative.

You can start with a particular idea.

You start with a composition. And when

you add certain colors that create a tension that destabilize the narrative, the narrative shifts. If something's in red or a lemon yellow or you know

whatever that is, your relationship to it, your empathy for it, your repulsion to it, those things all shift depending on the color. So it becomes this kind of

alchemic substance to the subject. You

know, you you can turn things from one thing into another just by shifting the color. You can you can make it the most

color. You can you can make it the most important thing. And so that for me is

important thing. And so that for me is strange that that there's almost a narrative to the color when it's put in relationship to other things.

When you were speaking, I wondered if is an analogy thinking about cinema and how like when you separate sound and image, what you can do with sound and what that does to the image is profound. Is is

there something similar like that happening to you? Is is color like something you're able to is it a lever you're able to to turn to affect more

tension, emotion in the composition?

Yeah, absolutely. And I I really like that link to sound. I feel like sound is kind of a mix of color and mark when you when you relate it to painting. There's

something there's something about a physical distance of a mark, the speed of a mark, the way that the brush sits and leaves a trace on a on a surface

that has a a kind of relationship to the length of a note, a pause, um whether that like I said earlier, whether something's stacato or

it's quiet or loud. Um, you know, all these things have certainly for me feel very close between music and color and mark in painting. Exactly what you said

when you use a particular, you know, you can you can totally change the scene just just by by the soundtrack you you put in there.

Right. One of the um it's interesting. I

like that you like that thing about sound because I was thinking about, you know, my next question sort of backing into the work is around is about your

compositions which have so much movement. You know,

you are not a static painter. Colors

swirl, figures are bending and swaying.

Um, I mean this is and I think about them in distinction to someone like Carrie James Marshall or Luke Toyman's where figures are are actually a bit

static and almost sculptural sometimes.

And one writer even talked to you talked about I forget who it is now but they talked about the work as being filled with jump cuts and dissolves which is of course the language of film. And I

wondered if you could talk about what's at stake for you in what I would kind of what I might call this kind of pictorial liquidity, you know, this this this very

fluid sense of movement that happens in the work.

Wow, what a great question. I I remember seeing um I think it was probably I don't know if I've ever seen the actual painting, but certainly an image of Dashamp's I think it's a is it a nude or woman descending

the stairs? Um,

the stairs? Um, it's a new descending the staircase.

Yeah.

Yeah. But that blew my mind uh that you could do that in painting.

You know, it's such an extraordinary painting. And then and then thinking

painting. And then and then thinking about certain other things where even though what you're looking at France house is another one, you know,

where there's such subtle gestures. Goya

is another one where you see the the material itself, the mark, but it's alive. And and I always think about Goya

alive. And and I always think about Goya talking about drawing and talking about the mark embodying the subject as opposed to the line illustrating the

subject and and and that that being something that has been a guide for me really. Um and what what that does it it

really. Um and what what that does it it becomes very different. It becomes very different when you when you think that the mark that you put down is the thing. You're not trying

to describe the thing, but it is the actual uh subject that you're talking about. Suddenly, when you do two marks,

about. Suddenly, when you do two marks, there is movement, there is energy. When

you have the color that then destabilizes that, there's another sense that something something is moving or um

you know and and that that sense of of um not being able to try and hold contain something for me is really important

also conceptually that the the subjects and ideas that I'm thinking about and working through by making paintings I never have a fixed position to them.

Um, and so it's important for me that that's also reflected in in the way that the paintings are. Um, that

that they're attempts to find something.

They're not ways of of making a statement. I'm I'm not standing trying

statement. I'm I'm not standing trying to, you know, advocate necessarily for a political position. I'm interested in in

political position. I'm interested in in something of you know often a problem or something I see as problematic but feel implicated

in like that I don't feel that those are are static um ideas as well and I I think in that same way where there's a level of

agitation in in me and what I then embark on through making a painting I feel like the paintings also embody by keeping the things so fluid and

moving. Is it is that part of a way of

moving. Is it is that part of a way of you saying I am once I am at in the one time I'm identifying with these people in the paintings. I'm other from them

and you're not allowing that otherness to get calcified. You're you're creating a situation in which the viewer and you

and the figures in the painting are kind of in this soup together and and the ground is unstable on for all of us.

Oh, that was a difficult one as well.

I know it's not actually one of the questions on my list.

No, no, no. It's it's it's Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I I think this comes to this fundamental idea of instability. Um and

I think anything that I would say of the work in from and try and say you know at once there's an attempt to identify with

a with a subject but then also it's about identifying with let's say an oppressor of a subject as well as the as

well as the victim. Like I I think and um I'm only using those terms because like it just provides two two different

sides. Um I'm very very distrusting of a

sides. Um I'm very very distrusting of a of an attempt to give a single a single answer or thesis for any of the things

that I do because I I don't it doesn't feel true. Often

feel true. Often often when I make a painting, it's because I feel implicated on the wrong side, right?

Whatever the right or wrong is, but I feel a sense of implication. Even in the migration paintings, you walk around with these things on your phone the whole time. Like

horrific, horrific things are if you if you wish to pay attention to it, if you wish to try and give your time to something, you

can. and

can. and how society then chooses to talk about it and chooses to position themselves towards one group or another. We are

implicated in that. And I don't think it's honest to take oneself out of the society that and the decisions society makes. It doesn't mean you've made those

makes. It doesn't mean you've made those same decisions, but you are still part of it. I read an interview with you and

of it. I read an interview with you and um you said that one of the things that motivated you was to see what was hiding underneath the garbage dump. And on the

one hand, you were referring to a specific painting that you've made about a garbage dump. But it also seemed to be so metaphoric about it didn't seem only

about that. It seemed like the tradition

about that. It seemed like the tradition of western painting uh is is its own kind of garbage dump, you know, like everything, you know,

piles up in front of us. And and um the writer Mantha Diawara talks about your work in terms of repair.

And I wonder, and what you just said was so eloquent, is art a repairative form for

you? I mean it it is the the mere

you? I mean it it is the the mere gesture of of making pictures about these things that we carry around with us on our phone and we are deciding

daily hourly sometimes whether or not we're going to give this these things that are happening in our world our attention.

Um, when we do give them our attention in the form of like looking at your work or when you're giving them the attention and while you're making the work, is

there something about repair that you're engaged with in that?

Repair is super difficult because it implies a different type of action other than what happens with a painting on a in my case what happens with a painting

on the wall. Um, and it it's the same.

The reason I'm I'm a little bit hesitant with with this idea is that it feels close to the frustration that people

have with the lack of agency or function of art when it's as an artist making work that there's something frustrating that what you're making, let's say,

doesn't change policy. It's not the same thing. you know, it's you the action

thing. you know, it's you the action doesn't have an immediate effect on society like that, but that doesn't mean it's it's it's not potent or necessary

or um important to culture. Culture is

like it's literally what's created by people being together. Um

the the things that we have apart from our bones that are leftovers are aspects of culture. They're paintings on the

of culture. They're paintings on the wall. Um the these are the things that

wall. Um the these are the things that people use to try and reflect on and make sense of life. There there aren't necessarily tangible outcomes, but it's

fundamental. It's fundamental to to how

fundamental. It's fundamental to to how groups of us live together. It's

fundamental to how two people can relate to each other. And and like that, I don't I don't know again I I don't know

about the the this idea of repair. Um, but I do think that there's a space to reflect and I do

think there's a space to um have your position and perspective on something changed through whatever the contemplative act of looking at something is

having to think about certain ideas. If

if you look at again historically at points at which artists let's say painters again in terms of the visual world and again I'm going to stick to a western world in this sense but you

could probably do it with many other things but let's say you know in painting in Renaissance times images were made the images you could see and consume were made by the hands of

artists.

Now it's very different because you have many many different types of of things like that.

But what we can see now is that the presence or lack of presence of different types of people of different

types of ideas that the way that art is there are only types of presences that can be made aware in this space. like

it's a very it's a very um sorry what what I'm saying is a little bit opaque but that's because I don't really understand what what happens when you look at art objects. I don't understand

it. I don't understand

it. I don't understand um um that thing, but I know it's powerful and I know it's I know it's important and I

know there's a there's in my mind I feel like there should be a level of freedom of thought that one is afforded by walking into a space without on it. I I

think it's I think it should be a space for very difficult things. It should be a space for awe, for wonder. It should

be a space for for us to talk about all of it. All the positive things, all the

of it. All the positive things, all the negative things. You know that that's

negative things. You know that that's culture. Thank god it's not just a kind

culture. Thank god it's not just a kind of attempt to say something pretty like, you know, imagine if it's metamorphosis was just people doing good things all

the time and people saying well done for doing those good things. You know,

nothing would come of that. And I I I think this is this is kind of the the magical space that us as artists and anyone who operates in the art world, you you get to live in where for me the

things that are really vital are problematic.

One of the things I I find about your work that's interesting to me in terms of it seems like it breaks a couple of art school taboss, like your work is not

at all ironic. Like there's I I don't sense any recourse to irony in the work.

Um, and the work is also has a kind of deep narrative function. Even the way you were talking about art just now, like you know, when we're engaging with it, what we're doing is sort of like

really taking on the big problematics of our time, of our world, and to focus on narrative rather than process or abstraction. You've you've managed to to

abstraction. You've you've managed to to walk away from some art school truisms. And I'm curious how you were able to do

that. I do find some some ironies in my

that. I do find some some ironies in my own work. I'm not going to go into that

own work. I'm not going to go into that now. But I think having been at art

now. But I think having been at art school at a time where the academy was irony like that was the thing that was

expected like it killed it. If you if that if that if you're if you're there and and and that's really you know like that that is the thing isn't interesting

that that there are that something is undermined is interesting that a position is undermined is interesting I think that's where you know someone like

Kippenburgger is extraordinary um because his work undermines itself all the time you know as soon as you feel

like this is just the kind of slide, you know, elbow nudging joke. It hits hard in another way. And I I think I think

irony when it's used like that um is extremely powerful. I think irony for

extremely powerful. I think irony for the sake of it as as a way of of avoiding an issue um is really problematic and that

becomes academic. you know, you're

becomes academic. you know, you're you're doing it in a performative way that takes the risk out of making work.

And for me personally, I almost need to feel a sense of risk with what I'm making to myself. I don't I don't know.

I don't trust my own position to the to what I'm making often. And and I I know sometimes that can be fine, but I know other times it's not that it's not

great, you know, and and can potentially lead to other types of problems which, you know, what can you do, but that something is on the line and isn't

complete and isn't a a complete package thesis that that is airtight, you know, for me that's important. That's that

when I see artists who do that, those artists move me deeply and and and the endeavor is something I respect.

You've started an art space in Nairobi and there's quite a tradition in the United States of artist founded spaces, particularly

black artists in the United States who founded these artistr run spaces. And I

wondered if you could just tell us a little bit about the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute and how it came about and if you see it as linked to this tradition in the states of black

artistr run spaces.

Yeah. You know in in 2017 I hosted something called the gathering and that really came about in the form that it was after attending the gates's black

artist retreat. You know, that really

artist retreat. You know, that really showed me the importance of bringing people together in Kenya. With the

exception of our national museum, pretty much all the other art spaces that have had a long duration and had a big impact um have been artistled spaces

as well. There's a space PAPA uh which

as well. There's a space PAPA uh which started in I think in the early 60s if I'm not wrong um and

is still around today in a sadly in quite a depleted shape and form but but it's still there um that's an artistr run space there for many years the main

commercial gallery was called Gallery Watus watu is three people and it was set up by three artists um so

you We also have a lot of collectives um around Nairobi and often the artist collectives would show their own work would create their own type of

infrastructure to get visibility for themselves because of the general lack of lack of that that we had um and have.

So it's it's something that that has very deep roots uh where I'm from as well. But certainly in trying to create

well. But certainly in trying to create a diff another type of space, a different type of space which which we're trying to do within Kai. Um I've

looked a lot a lot at models in America.

Places like you know the studio museum has been really fundamental especially through talking to Thelma about it has been really fundamental to how I've

thought about our our setup as well. um

and the way we try and structure ourselves and the type of activities that we try and engage in.

And what kinds of things are you doing?

I I noticed you you call it Enkai. What

kinds of things does Enkai do?

Um we're an arts institute that's dedicated to the growth and preservation of art in the region. In order to do that, we have several different aspects of of our our program and exhibitions.

We have our exhibitions based around four types of shows. an international

exhibition, a group show that's curated by an outside curator not from Enkai and then two solo shows, one one of a mid-career artist or or younger artist

and one retrospective exhibition. We

have publications that we do. We have a little library. We also have a quite

little library. We also have a quite varied sort of normal programming through artist talks, community outreach. We have an education outreach

outreach. We have an education outreach for schools um which is really exciting at the moment and things are just starting to really take off. It's taken

us a long time to engage with government schools because art for a long time wasn't on the syllabus in Kenya and then recently the syllabus was changed

and so um it's opened an opportunity for us to really start engaging with both government and other underfunded schools and bringing school kids to the space to

see art for the first time. We have a collection. Um, the collection has been

collection. Um, the collection has been a real surprise to me. I was thinking of it as an artist. Like I love going to museums and seeing work and we don't

have publicly available collections um in Kenya. And so I I thought about it as

in Kenya. And so I I thought about it as learning for artists. But what's been amazing is seeing the the reaction of our ordinary visitors. Um, our

collection is in storage most of the time, but the storage is publicly accessible. seeing what that is also to

accessible. seeing what that is also to the school kids who can open the a rack and see something from the 60s, you know, who can do that something from the

70s, the 80s. It's been

one of the most rewarding things to see what a connection can be to our visitors. Um we also have a mentorship

visitors. Um we also have a mentorship program that is kind of our attempt at doing some type of post-graduate education where um it's called a juy and

we set up an artist with an international artist and they have a year of mentorship culminating in an exhibition in our space. Um we've done residencies with curators. We have a

little apartment that is there to support anyone who's um researching or visiting Nairobi um within the art world and literature as well um to again try

and encourage people to spend some time really take things in. One of the things coming up is Venice Bianale and you know we we were

really moved that Coyo had asked us to be part of that and part of her vision for for that. So, you know, um we we're doing all sorts of things at the moment.

Um but yeah, that's that's kind of an overview.

That sounds great. And I'm so glad that we could just have a moment of a shout out for Coyo. It's uh

yeah, it's it's beyond bittersweet what's about to happen. And so, it's nice to hear her name ring out on the podcast.

Um okay, Michael, congratulations on the Palazzo Gratzi show. everyone who's

going to go to Venice is going to be able to have such a great encounter with your work and I'm just so grateful that you took time out of your install to talk with us today at Dialogues. Thank

you.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Dialogues is produced by David Werner.

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