Milly Thompson

My Body Temperature is Feeling Good

★★☆☆☆

On until 24 August 2025

There is a tendency in public cultural projects to parade their “relevance” overtly. This posthumous retrospective of irreverent caricaturist of seaside female sexuality and BANK member Thompson does little but, losing sight of the work itself. The gallery goes all-in on ephemera and paraphernalia from the artist’s archive, leaving Thompson’s paintings – her declared medium of choice “in the era of the powerful female artist and her texts [and] performances” – as an afterthought. 

Even away from the catalogues and posters, Thompson’s disobedient flesh is less than a riot. Granted, the sea, sand, and sun do turn every body into quasi-sexual, quasi-revolutionary subjects. But they’re far from the radical “the moon, the sea, & the matriarch” triad Thompson promises her followers. Sagging buttocks and breasts dance with crab and ice sundaes on her canvases, giving together only a passing impression of some great taboo having been overcome.

The illusion fades with the sunset, having posed its question too lightly. Thompson’s paint is thin as a layer of sunscreen, her line awkward. The rebellion of sex – oh, what is it to be a woman in a world of nothing but! – gets only to slogans. 


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Yoko Ono at Tate ★★★☆☆

Yoko Ono

Music of the Mind

★★★☆☆

This show will sell tickets. But it won’t change the weather.

Justin Caguiat, Dreampop at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Justin Caguiat

Dreampop

★★★★☆

This is the sort of exhibition that makes a critic question the quality of their judgment.

Anna Glantz, Lichens at Approach ★★★☆☆

Anna Glantz

Lichens

★★★☆☆

The clues that Glantz leaves on her surfaces are also traps. There are either too many or not quite enough to follow or fall into. 

Liam Gillick, The Sleepwalkers at Maureen Paley ★★★☆☆

Liam Gillick

The Sleepwalkers

★★★☆☆

Gillick’s practice lacks obviously consistent character, save for it is sparseness of means and the ungraspability of its referents.

Theodore Ereira-Guyer, Jandyra Waters: We Lost Lots of Beautiful Things at Elizabeth Xi Bauer

Theodore Ereira-Guyer, Jandyra Waters

We Lost Lots of Beautiful Things

★★★★☆

The human mind is mimetic – all art is representation.

Adriano Costa, ax-d. us. t at Emalin ★★★☆☆

Adriano Costa

ax-d. us. t

★★★☆☆

Form triumphs over detritus.

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