LONDON — In a small rural village in Scotland, an advertisement-style billboard by Milly Thompson (1964–2022) depicted two girls in swimwear and scuba gear, swinging their hair in joyful abandon. The fashions, nonetheless, had been middle-aged girls relatively than slim younger ladies, their faces freed from make-up and their pores and skin displaying wrinkles and stretch marks. This parody of luxurious commercial is deliberately brash and ugly, demonstrating the defiance of older girls who push again towards the invisibility assigned to them by patriarchal society. On this work and people for which Thompson is finest identified, which regularly draw on the artwork historic trope of the reclining nude lady, set in semi-abstracted trip locations comparable to sun-drenched seashores, there may be an eroticism with out objectification — a feminine gaze that’s each empowering and intimate.
“Near Witches” (2021) is re-presented outdoors the rooftop terrace of a solo exhibition of Thompson’s work at Goldsmiths Centre for Modern Artwork, the place it’s proven to be each sensual and powerfully irreverent. In the course of the Nineties, she was a part of the artist collective BANK, which critiqued and parodied company identification, consumerism, and wealth. After the group disbanded, she established a prolific solo observe incorporating portray, sculpture, and video, through which she continued to critique client tradition, however shifted her focus to think about its relationship with the middle-aged feminine physique — a subject too typically ignored throughout the historical past of artwork.
Set up view of Milly Thompson: My Physique Temperature is Feeling Good at Goldsmiths CCA, London (picture by Rob Harris; courtesy Goldsmiths CCA)
All through Thompson’s work, we see girls making an attempt to free themselves from the entanglements of patriarchy. A number of of her most up-to-date work, made shortly earlier than her demise, use extra summary compositions of line, shade, and ink wash to recommend feminine our bodies rising from jumbled shapes or esoteric symbols and emojis, as if struggling to interrupt free and discover visibility. Emojis are each extremely particular to modern web tradition and expressive of common feelings and associations, mirroring Thompson’s commentary that ladies’s experiences are each particular to our period and tradition and echoes of historical past.
A part of the present is devoted to Thompson’s publications, writings, and collaborations, demonstrating the breadth of her observe. In her 2010 manifesto “I Choose Painting,” reproduced within the exhibition, she claims she “can’t be bothered” to tackle advanced notions of politics and philosophy. As a substitute, she is going to “just accept the hegemony of male materials and let myself scramble in male shit for breath. My thoughts are only of escape, simplicity, sensuality. So I choose painting.” This intelligent, tongue-in-cheek assertion succinctly questions the masculine domination of portray, and poses sensuality as a radical various to male expression. Her phrases and wider observe concurrently specific a deep engagement with the advanced points that decide how girls are seen — and see themselves — among the many patriarchal capitalist system.
Our notions of magnificence, Thompson suggests all through her work, are intentionally constructed to limit girls and deform their self-image. In these voluptuous and humorous photos, in contrast, magnificence comes as a lot from angle as from aesthetics. As Thompson herself wrote: “I see two sides of my femaleness. One repressed and the other rampant.”
Set up view of Milly Thompson: My Physique Temperature is Feeling Good at Goldsmiths CCA, London
Set up view of Milly Thompson: My Physique Temperature is Feeling Good at Goldsmiths CCA, London
Set up view of Milly Thompson: My Physique Temperature is Feeling Good at Goldsmiths CCA, London
Milly Thompson: My Physique Temperature is Feeling Good continues at Goldsmiths Centre for Modern Artwork (St. James’s, New Cross, London), by way of August 24. The exhibition was curated by Natasha Hoare and Sarah McCrory.
