Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in League With the Night

Beautiful exhibition at Tate Britain of work by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye dating from her time at the Royal Academy schools in 2003 to pictures painted during the Covid lockdowns.

This was a beautifully hung show with little explanation and themed rather than chronological rooms. It just left the pictures and the people in them to talk to each other. The works were all figurative, either individual figures or groups. She captures gestures and posture beautifully in loose paint work.

Yiadom-Boakye is also a poet and calls the titles of her works “an extra brush stroke”. They are enigmatic and make you start to build stories about the people in your mind. You see echoes of the history of art without them being derivative.

I felt like I had met a lot of interesting new people in this show.  


Closed 31 May 2021

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