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:

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting at National Portrait Gallery ★★★☆☆

Jenny Saville

The Anatomy of Painting

★★★☆☆

There is no trace of the visceral in Saville’s gentle pencil studies, for example.

Robert Rauschenberg, ROCI at Thaddeus Ropac ★★★☆☆

Robert Rauschenberg

ROCI

★★★☆☆

This project outs Rauschenberg as a propagandist if not an outright Fed.

Gray Wielebinski, The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low at ICA ★☆☆☆☆

Gray Wielebinski

The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low

★☆☆☆☆

I knew that it was possible to understand art and life less after seeing an exhibition. I didn’t, however, imagine that experiencing Wielebinski’s work twice would only compound such damage.

The Poplar Bestiary at Tondo Cosmic ★★★☆☆

Tamsin Morse, Kris Lock, Casper Scarth, et al.

The Poplar Bestiary

★★★☆☆

This menagerie comes with no humanly comprehensible challenge.

A light here required a shadow at Maximillian William ★★★☆☆

Grant Falardeau, Rimantė Mikulovičiūtė, Benjamin Sasserson, Bu Shi, Dylan Williams

A light here required a shadow

★★★☆☆

Catch the wrong end of the spectrum and forever remain obscured.

Firelei Báez, A Midnight’s Dream at South London Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Firelei Báez

A Midnight's Dream

★☆☆☆☆

Such kitsch might have been fine in a spinster auntie’s bedroom. In the gallery, it is a cruel trick.

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