Uncle of the Garden

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings resemble portraiture, but the figures she depicts are not real people. Instead, they are composites drawn from the artist’s memory and imagination. As she explains, they spring from ‘the fantasies, nonsenses and random associations in my head which meld with the life I live and the things that happen around me’. Often, her paintings are conceived as part of a group, and she comments that ‘looking, seeing and reading across them’ is something that she likes to encourage. Her triptych Uncle of the Garden was featured in the group exhibition Mirrorcity at the Hayward Gallery, in 2014.