“It’s going to be hectic,” says Michael Armitage, the 38-year-old Kenyan-British painter, referring to what lies in store for him this autumn. I assume he has in mind various commitments surrounding his new exhibition at White Cube’s gallery in Bermondsey, south-east London, which, opening today, features 18 of his incandescent, magical-realist compositions, alluding to contemporary socio-political events and films, as well as the ancestral stories and myths of his mother’s Kikuyu ethnic group. These days, after all, Armitage is an artist in demand.
Since 2014, when a director at the gallery first came across his work in a book about emerging painters, he has exhibited all over the world, from Sydney to New York. Three years ago, The Conservationists (2015) sold at auction for a record $1.52 million, more than 21 times its estimate. Followers of contemporary painting in this country, though, will more likely remember his outstanding solo show Paradise Edict, held at the Royal Academy last spring, for which he won a South Bank Sky Arts award for visual art.