Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly In League With The Night – Tate Britain, London (LAST CHANCE TO SEE)

A review of Fly in League With The Night, an exhibition of works by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain. A refreshingly contemporary offering from the more traditional of the two London Tate galleries.

Discovering Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

I love learning about artists I was not previously familiar with. I was very pleased, therefore, that Tate Britain reopened their exhibition of work by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for a short two-week post-lockdown period. Yiadom-Boakye is a British painter and writer who trained at the Royal Academy Schools and Falmouth School of Art. The exhibition surveys her work over more than fifteen years. Her work over this period is remarkably unified, so there is a real sense of getting to know her style over the space of a few rooms.

Yiadom-Boakye is a portrait painter. Her portraits, however, are not of specific people. Instead, she paints from memory, from things she has seen. Some of the works have a composition which recalls print media, reminding me of Gerhard Richter’s paintings of newspaper images. For the artist, it is the act of painting which is more important than the subjects she depicts.

Her paintings have a soft and dreamy quality. There is little to anchor them to a specific time or place. Even the titles create a distance from the paintings rather than opening a window onto them. A rather straightforward 2010 portrait, for example, has the title Further Pressure From Cannibals. What are we to make of this? Well all signs point to the fact that Yiadom-Boakye wants us to make up our own minds.

The Exhibition As Jumping-Off Point

Something which struck me as I explored this exhibition was the way in which Yiadom-Boakye does not want to explain to her viewers how to view the paintings, yet at the same time wants to draw us into her world. The presentation is in fact so neutral it feels at times like being in a commercial gallery. The texts are all outside the exhibition itself, with only basic labels once you step inside. The walls are all a cream colour which vaguely reminded me of various flats I’ve lived in – a far cry from the bold colours of the Turner exhibition downstairs. It all adds to the feeling of disassociation and anonymity.

However, on the other hand, this is the first Tate exhibition I can recall with both a Spotify playlist and a reading list. The Spotify playlist can be scanned before you enter the exhibition (also available here), so bring headphones if you want to listen as you view the paintings. I didn’t have headphones with me, but am listening to it while I write this review. There are some good tracks by Gil Evans, John Coltrane, Solange and others, but I don’t quite know what the music makes me feel in relation to the paintings. But as I say, this is a new thing for me. Maybe it will grow on me. The reading list is shared as you exit, and the books are available to buy in the small exhibition shop. It’s an interesting tension, this pushing away and pulling closer by the artist.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed this exhibition. I didn’t find it challenging – the word I would use is relaxing. In part this is due to the nature of the works themselves, but also the lack of information overload from text panels and interpretation and audio guides (unless you count the playlist as an audioguide).

After this interrupted stint at the Tate, the exhibition is off to Stockholm, Dusseldorf and Luxembourg. I’m glad that these audiences will also get a chance to discover the work of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. For me this is the type of exhibition I relish so that I can get to know an artist in depth. But the similarity of her work across the years means I would probably not seek out another survey of her work, unless there was an additional angle to tempt me.

It was a relatively quiet and socially-distanced affair even on my weekend visit, so if you have the chance and are in the neighbourhood of Tate Britain, you can visit until the 31st.

Salterton Arts Review’s Rating: 3/5

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly In League With The Night on until 31 May 2021

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