Interview by Christabel Stewart
Portrait by Valentina De Zanche

CS I want to start with the scale and orientation of the paintings. You’ve got two very large-scale, almost panoramic works in this show.

OA I feel they mimic a cinematic experience. The first time I watched a film at the IMAX at Cineworld, it completely changed my perspective. Compositionally, that encompassing feeling reminds me of an image, like with comics or manga. It’s a more contemporary way of viewing paintings compared to the traditional golden ratio Fibonacci sequencing, which is still ingrained in their composition. The long landscape format is difficult to work with, but I like setting myself challenges, exploring how different formats let me work with negative space.

CS Other interviews have noted your unique technique of faint gridding and allowing certain areas to be left empty. Can you elaborate?

OA This method of painting is based on the sight-size technique I learnt at the Royal Drawing School. I was obsessed with modern painters like William Coldstream and his protégé Euan Uglow, and their use of charcoal powder, which left faint markings on the painting. You can see where mistakes are left or have been changed, which I think is more visually exciting than covering them up. In my earlier works, I experimented a lot with overpainting, but that’s quite easy to do. I then got into the practice of showing restraint and trusting the paintings to guide the audience to fill the gaps themselves. In cinema, the most poignant moments arise when you give the audience so little that they imagine the worst thing themselves. I like that my work only offers the suggestion of things within space.

CS It’s interesting that your human figures are quite truncated; you show only parts, mostly legs. Is that to allow the imagination to make up the rest?

OA I have my own politics around not wanting to paint faces. I have painted faces before, but only suggestively. The figures I paint tend to always be Black, and I want them to have autonomy over how much they show themselves. What you see feels like a small snapshot into their world: someone’s head turning, catching the side of their eye. I’m drawn to the power of suggestion over something straight-on, though I have done straight-on before, too. It depends on finding the right pose for what’s being said. This show has been purposeful about that. Walking along a high street, you don’t always look at people’s faces; mostly you see legs, or a faint impression of someone passing by. One painting, Cash and Carry (2026), is long and panoramic, just legs walking past. You’re there for a task, a quick bit of milk or bread; you don’t get time to slow down and see who’s there. Sometimes someone waves at me on the street and I look down, walk straight past, and don’t quite see who’s in front of me.

CS There’s a very nice depiction of animals in both the religious signage and in one of the landscape paintings. Is that urban animal life in general or something specific to Dagenham High Street?

OA You can’t paint an homage to a high street without a fox or a pigeon. Foxes have a long history in British culture, going back to great paintings of the hunt, traditionally tied to the English countryside. Now, man’s great companion eats chicken and chips on the high street. It’s become a love-hate relationship: they were once useful to us, like pigeons in the First World War, and now they have become repositioned as a symbol of urban culture.

MP You capture signage beautifully, as in Bread, Fruit-tella and A Strawberry KA (2026).

AR I wanted a title that people would associate with the high street off-licence. I associate Fruit-tellas and Strawberry KA with growing up in Essex, being a kid with 50p, working out what I could get for that price. I know a lot of people in London share an adjacent experience, it’s tied to upbringing and home. It’s instinctively a very British conversation. Within that, it’s also quite niche, because KA is marketed as a Caribbean drink, usually shelved next to Ting and Rubicon. I can picture exactly where it is in the shop.

MP In your interview with Peer curator Beulah Ezeugo, you mention a Channel 4 programme that you enjoyed with a great title. Is that something from your adolescence?

AR I was really inspired by Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum (2015), which is about a council estate. My show references places rather than people, and I found a lot of inspiration in Coel’s oversaturated, brightly coloured, quirky landscapes. She portrays social housing from the perspective of the people who live in it, rather than the darkness that is typically associated with it. She still indirectly references moments of conflict, but shows a community brought together by place. Despite everything we know about social housing, the residents find a way to build community, an important and beautiful message. British high streets need to return to understanding community. On my high street, I’m confronted by British flags everywhere. They’ve been up for over a year now, tied to xenophobia and racism. During the World Cup they shifted back toward an idea of community during the World Cup. But now the World Cup is over, I have to ask: who feels community in this space? 

MP Your work has been described as exploring the ‘Black lens’. Is that a critical stance you take deliberately?

AR I don’t always consider myself a political person, but I believe my existence is political, and that’s very much backed by reading. Kevin Everod Quashi’s The Sovereignty of Quiet (2012), for instance, looks at the idea of resilience through rest. It offers a kind of rest for people most affected by these issues, simply by highlighting everyday experiences. That’s more restful than something antagonistic or shaped by what the media expects them to perform. I want to move away from justifying presence and just exist instead. In the face of everything affecting these communities, there is a power in mundanity, in just being able to live in the same way that everyone else gets to. .