LONDON — In a small rural village in Scotland, an advertisement-style billboard by Milly Thompson (1964–2022) depicted two ladies in swimwear and scuba gear, swinging their hair in joyful abandon. The fashions, nevertheless, had been middle-aged ladies moderately than slim younger women, their faces freed from make-up and their pores and skin exhibiting wrinkles and stretch marks. This parody of luxurious commercial is deliberately brash and ugly, demonstrating the defiance of older ladies who push again towards the invisibility assigned to them by patriarchal society. On this work and people for which Thompson is greatest identified, which frequently draw on the artwork historic trope of the reclining nude girl, set in semi-abstracted trip locations similar to sun-drenched seashores, there’s an eroticism with out objectification — a feminine gaze that’s each empowering and intimate.
“Close to Witches” (2021) is re-presented exterior 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 id, consumerism, and wealth. After the group disbanded, she established a prolific solo observe incorporating portray, sculpture, and video, during which she continued to critique shopper tradition, however shifted her focus to think about its relationship with the middle-aged feminine physique — a subject too usually missed throughout the historical past of artwork.
All through Thompson’s work, we see ladies trying 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 Select Portray,” reproduced within the exhibition, she claims she “can’t be bothered” to tackle complicated notions of politics and philosophy. As an alternative, she is going to “simply settle for the hegemony of male supplies and let myself scramble in male shit for breath. My ideas are solely of escape, simplicity, sensuality. So I select portray.” 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 categorical a deep engagement with the complicated points that decide how ladies 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 ladies and warp their self-image. In these voluptuous and humorous pictures, against this, magnificence comes as a lot from perspective as from aesthetics. As Thompson herself wrote: “I see two sides of my femaleness. One repressed and the opposite rampant.”
Milly Thompson: My Physique Temperature is Feeling Good continues at Goldsmiths Centre for Modern Artwork (St. James’s, New Cross, London), via August 24. The exhibition was curated by Natasha Hoare and Sarah McCrory.
