Legs 11: artist Alfie Kungu’s comically long-trousered figures

Bristol-based fine artist Alfie Kungu graduated from UWE this year with a BA in fine art. He’s already been made one of this year’s New Contemporaries’ artists, had three group shows this year — all in Bristol — and now he’s got his sights set on the capital, where later this month he’ll be exhibiting alongside Joe Clarke and Hetty Douglas.

Alfie’s work moves from paintings to drawings to patches, but beneath whatever medium he uses, is a bad mood-lifting sense of cheerfulness. Many of his paintings are made up of doodling patterns and textured splashes of colour, but the more figurative Legs series makes an excellent departure from the abstract.

So heavy on shell suits and trainers it could have been funded by Adidas or Nike, Legs looks at, er, legs. Heavily branded three-stripe tracksuit trousered legs and feet wrapped in Nike trainers swagger through each image, sometimes even walking comically across the border of one painting into another. In hyper-coloured, layered acrylic gloss and spray paint, Alfie’s work is comic, surreal and highly distinctive.

Alfie Kungu’s work will be on display as part of Screw at Republic Gallery London from 15 December.