Robson Orr TenTen Award 2023

Michael Armitage, Ngaben, 2023 © Michael Armitage – Commissioned by the Government Art Collection for The Robson Orr TenTen Award 2023.

In Ngaben, a new lithograph commissioned for the Government Art Collection, Michael Armitage pays homage to a close artist-friend in Bali, Indonesia, who recently died. Ngaben is a Hindu cremation ceremony practised in Bali; the ceremony is central to this intimate cycle-of-life vignette is the burning pyre. Two women hold each other as they watch the flames, while to their right a mother breastfeeds her baby. Mischievous mask-like faces crowd the bottom of the image. A line of simplified figures from early south-east African paintings form a mysterious script above.

Armitage is best known for his oil paintings on Lubugo bark cloth, used by the Baganda people in Uganda to make burial shrouds. He merges European painting styles with east African subjects and materials, or experiences of his recent move to Bali. Through his work, he weaves narratives that he draws from historical and current news media, popular culture and his own memories and imaginings. Often, as here, the real meets the ethereal.

Armitage was inspired by a vital outcome of the Robson Orr TenTen Award. Every year, sales of 11 of the limited-edition prints fund the acquisition of work by emerging British artists and those currently under-represented in the Collection.

‘Culture exists in the most difficult moments of people’s lives, at points at which they grieve and points at which they experience loss; it exists in celebration; it’s a reminder that we’re not here as isolated individuals, we’re here as something greater, and we have a responsibility to each other. For me, that’s really what it is to be an artist… It’s a very hard thing to quantify but it’s entirely necessary.’

Michael Armitage

To purchase a limited-edition TenTen print and contribute to the Government Art Collection’s mission to support UK art and emerging UK artists, please contact Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

Born in 1984 in Nairobi, Kenya, to a Yorkshireman father and Kenyan mother of Kikuyu ancestry, Armitage spent his childhood in east Africa before moving to London when he was 16, and later studying at the Slade School of Fine Art and Royal Academy Schools. He now works between London, Bali and Nairobi. He received his BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art (2003-07) and has a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools (2007-10). Solo exhibitions include Peace Coma, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2017); and MATRIX 263, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco, USA (2016).

Michael Armitage is represented by White Cube and David Zwirner.

Ten years, ten prints. Every year, the Government Art Collection commissions an outstanding British artist to create a print, with the support of philanthropists Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr.

Starting in 2018, and for the next ten years, the Government Art Collection will select outstanding British artists to create original print works for the Collection to display around the world. Artists including Hurvin Anderson, Tacita Dean, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Lubaina Himid and Rachel Whiteread have created original works for the Collection for TenTen. At the same time, annual sales from these prints will raise funds so that the Collection can continue to acquire art by emerging artists in the UK.