The paintings of prize-winning artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye are on show at Tate Britain in her largest exhibition yet.
Yiadom-Boakye began her career after graduating from the Royal Academy of Arts in 2003 and is known for using an especially dark palette. Many of her works are intentionally ambiguous and portray people lounging around or resting with thoughtful expressions, asking you to develop your own interpretation of what’s happening in the painting. You’ll notice that the figures in Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings are often placed in a blurred background and aren’t associated with any particular decade or time period. Instead, her paintings focus on things that everyone can relate to regardless of your age, such as relationships with friends or family, making her paintings familiar yet also mysterious. Yiadom-Boakye has described herself as a writer just as much as an artist and has written many short stories and poems.
This exhibition is set to bring together around 80 works from 2003 to the present day, raising questions of identity, representation and human relationships.
"Yiadom Boakye clearly doesn’t loathe the great tradition of oil painting."
"The encounter feels really intimate we are almost breathing down this beautiful neck and exquisitely painted ear."
"Yiadom Boakye leaves plenty of room for us to make our own presumptions about her characters who and what we want them to be but that’s by the by."
"This show brims with a love of paint what it’s done in the hands of these great artists, and what it can still do today, as Yiadom Boakye brings her entrancing characters into being."