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Lot Essay
Michael Armitage’s Elephants (2015) depicts two of the titular animals coupling against a vibrant, swirling backdrop of greenery and sky. Sinuous strokes and hatchings create a surface of liquid colour, mingling greens, yellows, deep purples and pearlescent blues. The elephants’ outlines glimmer: although starkly lit, their features are elided as if partially rubbed away. The work is painted on Armitage’s signature support of lubugo bark cloth, which he sources from traditional makers in Uganda. Its inherent holes, ridges and stitched seams imbue the painting with complex texture, at once subverting the image and grounding it in an East African material. Armitage was born in Nairobi and works there and in London, seeking to illuminate aspects of Kenyan life and culture in his vivid, dreamlike paintings.
Many of Armitage’s works are multi-figure compositions, with the narrative quality of history paintings. Elephants belongs to a group of pictures which hone in on individual animals, including giraffes, snakes and monkeys, sometimes in provocatively sexual guises. They riff on clichéd images of Africa, and on Western art-historical tropes such as the reclining nude. These works, write Anna Schneider and Dimona Stöckle, reveal ‘the gaze that exoticises and eroticises Africa—a continent that from colonial times to the present has provided a surface upon which notions of “wildness” and supposed authenticity could be projected’ (‘Paradise Edict—The Quest for Eden’, in Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict, exh. cat., Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2020, p. 12). With Elephants, Armitage disrupts this gaze by presenting an icon of African myth—one of the ‘Big Five’ animals sought by big-game hunters, and by tourists on safari—in an overtly carnal image.
Armitage draws his motifs from diverse sources, including direct observation, newspaper clippings, videos found on the Internet and photographs taken with his phone. While he is inspired by a range of painters—from East African artists such as Meek Gichugu and Sane Wade to Goya, Cezanne and Titian—one of his key points of reference is Paul Gauguin, whose visions of Tahiti as a mystical, erotic paradise reflected his own imagination and desires more than the realities of island life. Armitage appropriates and twists the language of these exotic fantasias. Even as they engage with complex and sometimes dark societal themes, his paintings’ visual allure makes the viewer aware of their own willingness to be enticed.
By painting on lubugo bark cloth, Armitage foregrounds not only the content of his works but also their construction. The material is less absorbent than canvas, so paint sits on the surface: the fluid forms and seductive, glowing hues in Elephants are achieved through multiple thin glazes of colour, layered and in places abraded to highlight the uneven ground beneath. The image appears like a mirage, shifting and psychedelic. Discussing this quality in his work, Armitage observes that ‘in a way, a painting is just a vision. It’s an apparition that’s brought into some more static state, so you can see it … But you’re hoping that even though the painting is an illusion, there’s something that allows you to go places that are otherwise very difficult to reach’ (in conversation with H-U. Obrist, in Michael Armitage: The Promise of Change, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2026, p. 129).
Many of Armitage’s works are multi-figure compositions, with the narrative quality of history paintings. Elephants belongs to a group of pictures which hone in on individual animals, including giraffes, snakes and monkeys, sometimes in provocatively sexual guises. They riff on clichéd images of Africa, and on Western art-historical tropes such as the reclining nude. These works, write Anna Schneider and Dimona Stöckle, reveal ‘the gaze that exoticises and eroticises Africa—a continent that from colonial times to the present has provided a surface upon which notions of “wildness” and supposed authenticity could be projected’ (‘Paradise Edict—The Quest for Eden’, in Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict, exh. cat., Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2020, p. 12). With Elephants, Armitage disrupts this gaze by presenting an icon of African myth—one of the ‘Big Five’ animals sought by big-game hunters, and by tourists on safari—in an overtly carnal image.
Armitage draws his motifs from diverse sources, including direct observation, newspaper clippings, videos found on the Internet and photographs taken with his phone. While he is inspired by a range of painters—from East African artists such as Meek Gichugu and Sane Wade to Goya, Cezanne and Titian—one of his key points of reference is Paul Gauguin, whose visions of Tahiti as a mystical, erotic paradise reflected his own imagination and desires more than the realities of island life. Armitage appropriates and twists the language of these exotic fantasias. Even as they engage with complex and sometimes dark societal themes, his paintings’ visual allure makes the viewer aware of their own willingness to be enticed.
By painting on lubugo bark cloth, Armitage foregrounds not only the content of his works but also their construction. The material is less absorbent than canvas, so paint sits on the surface: the fluid forms and seductive, glowing hues in Elephants are achieved through multiple thin glazes of colour, layered and in places abraded to highlight the uneven ground beneath. The image appears like a mirage, shifting and psychedelic. Discussing this quality in his work, Armitage observes that ‘in a way, a painting is just a vision. It’s an apparition that’s brought into some more static state, so you can see it … But you’re hoping that even though the painting is an illusion, there’s something that allows you to go places that are otherwise very difficult to reach’ (in conversation with H-U. Obrist, in Michael Armitage: The Promise of Change, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2026, p. 129).