The Long Walk Home (Xala), 2020

Michael Armitage RA Elect (b. 1984)

RA Collection: Art

The Long Walk Home (Xala) reimagines a scene from the 1975 film Xala by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène in which a group of beggars are driven into the desert by police. Armitage shows two of the group making their way back from the desert, one carrying the other.

Armitage is best known as a painter but is also a printmaker, often producing lithographs in multiple colours like this example. This impression is an artist's proof (number 2 of an edition of 10) and is signed by the artist on the verso. An impression of the print was shown in the RA Summer Exhibition 2021 in Gallery VII.

Armitage was born in Kenya and works between Nairobi and London. Studying first at the Slade he later moved to the Royal Academy Schools, graduating in 2010. His colourful, dreamlike paintings play with visual narratives and challenge cultural assumptions, exploring politics, history, civil unrest and sexuality.