One thing was clear from the start that we would have 'Black Allegiance
To The Cunning' as the first work that visitors see when they opened the door.
And it shows a man very relaxed on a kitchen chair laughing and looking directly at the viewer.
So far so good and straightforward but then you see that underneath his chair curled up,
just as happy as the man on the chair, is a fox. A fox of course usually associated with wilderness.
Now we have them in our cities everywhere but we certainly don't have them as domestic animals.
So this painting from the start gives you a jolt of something
slightly untoward, something slightly surreal and
therefore sets the mood for the rest of the room and the rest of the exhibition in a way.
They're not of people that are that I know or that are there or that are specific or they're
built out of many different people or things or thoughts or images that i've found or images
that I've drawn or in some part memory. I never wanted it to be pinned down to a
particular time. I think the timelessness is important. There's a universality to that.
Sometimes when things suggest a particular time it becomes concerned with that.
I don't feel concerned with that, I don't want to be concerned with that because i think what I'm
talking about transcends time.
It's everlasting, there is no end to this era.
'Daydreaming of Devils' is such a bright palette of yellows, ochres, greens, turquoises. The closer
you look the more you see this vibrancy of colour that has suddenly come into it
and coincidentally the dancer has a strange thing around his neck. It looks at first like
a garland but it isn't a garland it looks like a dead fox. Something old ladies used to wear
in the last century and it's a very strange accessory for this ballet dancer.
Lynette is also a writer and she writes poetry in a way, in a non-rhyming prose poems that are
very reminiscent of Aesop's Fables or La Fontaine's Fables but very much with
animals being the prime actors. The animals often, they are the powerful ones, they are the ones who
know all about the weaknesses of the humans.
'Accompanied To The Kindness' from 2012, a man holding a very very colourful parrot and the man
is looking at the parrot. The parrot of course, it can be a domestic animal but there is a very
particular relationship here and as in all of the paintings that feature animals, the animals
seem to be a kind of familiar. There's another painting called 'The Matters' in another room
of a man holding an owl and the man is directly looking at the viewer,
as is the owl, and the connection between both is so powerful and overwhelming, they are one.
This is a gallery in which there's a different feel, a different atmosphere
with very interesting connections between one another.
There's also one work that sits alone and that's a new painting, in fact it's the very
newest painting in the exhibition. The title is 'The High Mind and Disrepute'. Yiadom-Boakye
has referred to her titles as an extra brush stroke, they don't explain away the painting
but they are a wonderful addition. This is a very interesting painting that marks a very
significant departure in Yiadom-Boakye's work and it's very interesting in relation to her command
of the canvas and to the spatialisation of the situations in which we encounter her figures.
There are two men, one lounging on a wicker chair a very sort of 70s style and another standing
with a guitar performing for the seated figure. It's a lovely intimate scene,
the two men are gazing at one another, they don't gaze at us. We have a feel of looking
in or looking on but what is incredibly striking is this sweeping diagonal that cuts the canvas
in two behind the figures in which we encounter. That space of abstraction which we see in her
early work is here now in a different form and it marks a significant shift to her approach.
At the centre of the exhibition we are carried into the space by the most exquisite painting
'A Passion Like No Other'. It's the painting which we chose to market the exhibition
because it's such a wonderful striking work the first thing that really draws you in
is the gaze. It's the eyes, it's the whites of this figure who is standing dead centre, otherwise
expressionless, he has a ruff around his neck, a little carnival-esque reference perhaps. Otherwise
he's standing in a very deep almost black, blue and he's situated in this totally abstract space
of greens and blues and greys. It's a small canvas but it commands our attention absolutely. The ruff
is a recurring motif that appears in many works across many years. Like so much of Yiadom-Boakye's
work, it's not explained but again it's a timeless element and a strange one because it seems of
course theatrical. About the same time with her feeling for paint and combined with the figures,
the faces, the expressions that she conjures through paint, it becomes incredibly contemporary.
One of my absolute favourites of the exhibition is entitled 'For The Sake of Angels'. It's an
extraordinary painting of a young man in profile with a shadow cast on the wall behind him
and he's wearing a white shirt and grey jacket but the modulation of the folds,
the different variations of greys are so skillful and virtuosic and all together these paintings
exude such an extraordinary sense of serenity that you feel you're almost floating in that room.
This is one of my favourite works in the exhibition. 'Citrine by the Ounce''
which is a very small work.
There's this flash of gold behind the character's head that kind of picks up
the tie in another of the paintings and this character is really introspective
where there's maybe the implication of celebration or gathering. 'Citrine by the Ounce' is kind of
on his own thinking his own thoughts and isn't necessarily engaging with the other characters in
the room or with you necessarily. Sometimes these characters are really just there for themselves.
'No Need of Speech' is a painting with the most brilliant title and in many ways that could be a
a subtitle for the exhibition as a whole for Yiadom-Boayke painting is really
a language in itself and it is very important that these paintings speak for themselves. Any
kind of explanation comes through sensation, comes through seeing. That painting is hung
alongside a number of works that share a similar palette of whites and greys and deep darks.
The one that was hardest to hang was the 'The Stygian Silk',
the one with the dogs because it's so dark and because there's a lot of reflection coming off it,
and i really enjoyed painting it because as much as it threw up certain challenges
there was a certain constraint to it there were certain constraints just in terms of the
tone and the colour. I had to stick to a very particular palette.
I remember making it and I remember it being a very
kind of taxing yet enjoyable time because it was such a lot of calculations, such a lot of balance
and really having to think about all the different gradations of one colour. Most of the painting is
blue. I never use black, it's always a very very dark shade of brown or a very dark shade of blue.
So it was it was one of those processes in a way that was just really satisfying
on the mind because there was a logic there and that doesn't always happen.