Now in its sixth year, we are delighted to announce that the 2023 Robson Orr TenTen Award has been awarded to Michael Armitage.
In Ngaben, an exquisite new lithograph commissioned for the Government Art Collection, Michael Armitage pays homage to a close artist-friend in Bali, Indonesia, who recently died.
The print has been commissioned as part of a ten-year initiative produced by Outset with the Government Art Collection (GAC), and sponsored by leading philanthropists Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr. Every year a British artist is commissioned to create a unique, limited edition print to be shown in diplomatic buildings across the world. A small number are available for purchase through a collaboration with Outset to raise funds for the GAC acquisition fund. The 10-year scheme was launched in 2018 with the first five awards given to Hurvin Anderson (2018), Tacita Dean CBE (2019), Yinka Shonibare CBE (2020), Lubaina Himid CBE (2021) and Rachel Whiteread CBE (2022).
Ngaben is a Hindu cremation ceremony practised in Bali, and 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, and a line of simplified figures from early south-east African paintings form a mysterious script across the upper edge. Best known for his oil paintings on Lubugo bark cloth, used by the Baganda people in Uganda to make burial shrouds, Armitage merges European painting styles with east African subjects and materials, or experiences of his recent move to Bali, weaving narratives drawn from historical and current news media, popular culture and his own memories and imaginings. Often, as here, the real meets the ethereal. In marking the friendship of artists across generations, 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’, says Armitage, ‘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’, he adds, ‘that’s really what it is to be an artist…It’s a very hard thing to quantify but it’s entirely necessary.’
Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr said:
“With more than 30 works acquired through TenTen print sales over the last five years, it is fitting that for the sixth iteration of the award the Kenyan-born British artist Michael Armitage has chosen to highlight this important outcome of the programme. We are so grateful for his thoughtful, very personal contribution.
“As we continue this work to help diversify the Collection over the next five years, we are excited to announce our support this year of an ambitious new programme to take the TenTen prints into schools and introduce the Government Art Collection as a valuable resource for teachers across the UK.”