Tate Britain presents Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition Fly in League with the Night

This autumn Tate Britain will present Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s major survey exhibition Fly in League with the Night.

Widely considered to be one of the most important figurative painters working today, Yiadom-Boakye is celebrated for her enigmatic oil paintings of human subjects who are entirely imagined by the artist.

This exhibition will bring together 70 paintings spanning two decades, including works from her graduate exhibition.

The most extensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date, Fly in League with the Night was originally presented at Tate Britain in 2020 but was cut short by the national lockdown.

UK visitors will have a special opportunity to see the exhibition at Tate Britain again, following a critically acclaimed European tour.

The figures in Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings feel familiar and mysterious.

Each of her works is created from a composite archive of found images and her own imagination, raising questions of identity and representation.

Her paintings are created in spontaneous and instinctive bursts, revealing expressive, short brushstrokes and a distinctive palette of dark, dramatic tones contrasted with flashes of brightness.

Surveying the development of Yiadom-Boakye’s unique formal language from 2003 to the present day, the exhibition will include early paintings such as First, created for her postgraduate exhibition at the Royal Academy Schools in 2003, alongside more recent examples of her best-known paintings including A Passion Like No Other 2012, Amaranthine 2018 and For the Sake of Angels 2018.

Writing is central to Yiadom-Boakye’s artistic practice, she said: “I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about.”

Pictured: Yiadom-Boakye’s A Passion Like No Other 2012 Picture: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye