The BSR is pleased to present the first event of the 2024 Fine Arts Talks series.
On 24 January 11:30 CET, artist and founder of the Nairobi Contemporary Arts Institute Michael Armitage will be in conversation with artist Aaron Ford, Sainsbury Scholar at the British School at Rome.
Michael Armitage’s paintings weave multiple narratives that are drawn from historical and current news media, popular culture, and his own ongoing recollections of Kenya, his country of birth.
In their discussion they will consider the role of the painted image in relation to cultural history as a collaborative and global form of art making, as well as the thought processes and actions that take place when one is alone in the studio.
Michael Armitage was born in 1984 in Nairobi, Kenya and lives and works between London and Nairobi. He received his BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2007) and has a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools, London (2010). The artist was the recipient of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Award in 2020, and in 2021, he was elected a Royal Academician of Painting by the Royal Academy of Art, London. In 2020, Armitage founded the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI) to promote art by practitioners in East Africa. The nonprofit arts venue hosts exhibitions, curatorial research residencies, libraries and archives, as well as other educational initiatives that enrich the discourse on contemporary creative practices in the region. In the future, NCAI has plans to develop a postgraduate fine arts program, among other wide-reaching resources.
Solo exhibitions include: Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2023); White Cube Bermondsey, London (2022); Kunsthalle Basel (2022); Calcografía Nacional, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid (2022); Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (2021); Royal Academy, London (2021); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020); The Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2020); Projects 110, Studio Museum in collaboration and at MoMA, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2019); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2019); South London Gallery (2017); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2017); White Cube, Hong Kong (2017); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco (2016); White Cube, London (2015); and Royal Academy Schools Studios, London (2010).
Selected group exhibitions include: White Cube New York (2023); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2023); Tate Modern, London (2023); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2023); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2022); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2022); Tate Britain (2022); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2022); The Drawing Center, New York (2022); British Art Show 9, UK (2021-2022); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2021); Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK (2021); Diversity United, Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin (2021); Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2021); The Warehouse, Dallas (2020); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2020); 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina (2018); Prospect.4, New Orleans (2017); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2017); HOME, Manchester, UK (2016); Yuan Art Museum, Beijing (2015); 13th Biennale de Lyon, France (2015); Palazzo Capris, Turin, Italy (2015); South London Gallery (2014); and Drawing Room, London (2013).
Aaron Ford (b. 1994, London, UK) lives and works in London, UK. In his work, Ford suggests that painting can be utilised as a reference point along a historical timeline, locating recurrent iconographical symbols and detecting their presence within contemporary visual discourse.
Ford graduated with BA (Hons) Fine Art from Central St Martins in 2017. He has been awarded the Sainsbury Scholarship at The British School at Rome (2023/24) and was the artist in residence at Xenia Creative Retreat Residency (2022). Selected group exhibitions include; Winter Open Studios, The British School at Rome, Italy (2023), Perfect Passive, Xxijra Hii Gallery, London, (2023) On the edge of fashion, Rose Easton, London (2023), Horizon Line, ABR Contemporary, Miami (2023), Tree and Leaf, Hannah Barry Gallery (2022), Triggered economics, or How to commit to the inevitable, 24 Bruton Street, London UK (2021); and Paper Cuts, Saatchi Gallery, London UK (2018).
The talk will only be accessible online. In order to attend, please sign up to the link above. The talk will be recorded and will be accessible on the BSR YouTube page.
