Intimacy

Doron Langberg’s paintings, luminous in colour and often large in scale, celebrate the physicality of touch – in subject matter and process. Depicting himself, his family, friends and lovers, the broad scope of subjects and experiences in his work is connected by Langberg’s deeply felt use of paint. His intimate yet expansive take on relationships, sexuality, nature, family and the self proposes how painting can both portray and create queer subjectivity.

Drawing on art historical, political and personal references, Njideka Akunyili Crosby creates layered compositions that, precise in style, nonetheless conjure the complexity of contemporary experience. The domestic spaces she depicts feel intimate yet are often suspended between continents and through time. Vegetation in the form of houseplants, wallpaper, patterned fabric or views of foliage snatched through windows often serves to break down distinctions between interior and exterior space. Up close, we notice a second wave of imagery. Applied using an acetone transfer technique are photographic images derived from sources including Nigerian pop culture and politics. It is partly through this labour-intensive process that Akunyili Crosby addresses the idea of cultural overlap and the complex layering of influences – personal, cultural, historical and political – on people and places.

Gold leaf denotes the flowers held in the mouths of Ofili’s Dancers in Pink 3, 2020, who appear in shadow, framed by pink, as if caught up in their own realm, a space of rapturous abandon.

Green Stockings, 1964, is the last major painting Avery made of his wife, Sally Michel and, as with his late landscapes and seascapes, in this portrait he refines and condenses to achieve an image of intimacy and power.

Self-portraiture is a cornerstone of Paul’s art and in works such as In the Studio, Night, 2021, she opens up a painterly and conceptual dialogue between the dual role of subject and artist – caught between self-possession and self-scrutiny – as well as offering an extended consideration on the passage of time and of the essential dualities of the medium – its ability to capture qualities of form, light and atmosphere, and its material presence.

Date: 1989/2016 / Edition of 4 plus 2 APs (#3/4) / Framed size 74.5 x 58.1 cm / Isaac Julien’s seminal work Looking for Langston, 1989, is a lyrical exploration – and recreation – of the private world of poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes (1902–1967) and his fellow black artists and writers who formed the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. The 1989 film is a landmark in the exploration of artistic expression, the nature of desire and the reciprocity of the gaze, and would become the hallmark of what B. Ruby Rich named New Queer Cinema. Aspects of the film and its multi-layered narratives of memory and desire, expression and repression, are revisited and expanded upon in these photographic works.

Alice Neel (1900–1984) is widely regarded as one of the foremost American artists of the twentieth century. Neel developed a signature approach, creating daringly honest paintings of her family, friends, neighbours, art world colleagues, writers, poets, artists, actors, activists, and more. Her works, which are forthright and intimate, engage overtly and quietly with political and social issues. Always working from life and memory, Neel’s ability to depict those around her with unfazed accuracy, honesty, and compassion displays itself throughout her work. Throughout her life, Neel was interested in conveying the complexities and nuances of familial relationships. While candour and empathy are hallmarks of Neel’s art, her paintings of women and children, such as Mother and Child, 1938, are especially expressive of intimacy and compassion, as seen through the prism of her own experience as a woman and a mother.

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Milton Avery (1885–1965) is celebrated for his luminous paintings of landscapes, figures and still lifes, which balance distillation of form with free, vigorous brushwork and lyrical colour. Avery pursued an independent and steadfast course throughout his career. Always drawing imagery from the world around him, in particular the landscapes and people he loved, his art is as intimate and accessible as it is towering in its ambition and achievement. The archetypal theme of mother and child appears in paintings throughout Avery’s career, and Nursing Mother, 1962, is a crystalline reflection of his accumulated skills in portraying the figure.

An artist of uncompromising vision and a peerless storyteller, Paula Rego has since the 1950s brought immense psychological insight and imaginative power to the genre of figurative art. Drawing upon details of her own extraordinary life, on politics and art history, on literature, folk legends, myths and fairytales, Rego’s work at its heart is an exploration of human relationships, her piercing eye trained on the established order and the codes, structures and dynamics of power that embolden or repress the characters she depicts. Published in 1878, Eça de Queiroz’ novel Cousin Bazilio is a story of marriage, betrayal, blackmail and, ultimately, death that, set in bourgeois Portuguese society with a finely drawn cast and luxurious detail, intersects with many of the themes and motifs of Rego’s art. The Paradise of the title refers to the interior in which two characters from the novel, Luisa and Bazilio, conduct an affair.

Date: 1989/2016 / Edition of 4 plus 2 APs (#2/4) / Framed size 74.5 x 58.1 cm 29 3/8 x 22 7/8 in / Isaac Julien’s seminal work Looking for Langston, 1989, is a lyrical exploration – and recreation – of the private world of poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes (1902–1967) and his fellow black artists and writers who formed the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. The 1989 film is a landmark in the exploration of artistic expression, the nature of desire and the reciprocity of the gaze, and would become the hallmark of what B. Ruby Rich named New Queer Cinema. Aspects of the film and its multi-layered narratives of memory and desire, expression and repression, are revisited and expanded upon in these photographic works.

Date: 1989/2016 / Edition of 4 plus 2 APs (#3/4) / Framed size 74.5 x 58.1 cm 29 3/8 x 22 7/8 in / Isaac Julien’s seminal work Looking for Langston, 1989, is a lyrical exploration – and recreation – of the private world of poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes (1902–1967) and his fellow black artists and writers who formed the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. The 1989 film is a landmark in the exploration of artistic expression, the nature of desire and the reciprocity of the gaze, and would become the hallmark of what B. Ruby Rich named New Queer Cinema. Aspects of the film and its multi-layered narratives of memory and desire, expression and repression, are revisited and expanded upon in these photographic works.

In Satyr Night (waterfall), 2020, one of a number of recent paintings and works on paper that draws upon the myth of the satyr, Ofili repositions his subject away from conventional depictions of wild, Dionysian conduct with a sensitive representation in which his mythical figures appear lovingly at rest. Here, the nocturnal air is punctuated by the lush, kaleidoscopic colours of a waterfall, while gold leaf denotes the satyr’s horns, a flower held by a nymph, and dots that read as a shower of droplets exchanged by the couple.

Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity, as well as psychological and emotional force, to the genre of figurative art. Defined by its clarity, honesty and empathetic warmth her work, whether intimate or monumental, is attuned to our awareness as both observers and observed beings, and is questioning, complex and emotionally rich. Speaking about Self-Portrait with Esme in a Nightie, 2022, the artist says: ‘The work is part of a series of paintings I’ve been making since I was pregnant with my daughter Esme. I made this particular work in January 2022. We stand side by side and she’s almost 18 in the painting. It’s been a hard year for us but here we are side by side, still standing.’

Based in the UK, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami was born in Gutu, Zimbabwe and lived in South Africa from the ages of nine to seventeen. Her paintings combine visual fragments from a myriad of sources, such as online and archival images, and personal photographs, which collapse past and present. Autobiographic in nature, these are works that, ‘dealing with internal and private curiosities’, as the artist says, address how in a digitised world we use images to construct a sense of self, or experience and try to understand one another in a complex social reality.

Based in the UK, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami was born in Gutu, Zimbabwe and lived in South Africa from the ages of nine to seventeen. Her paintings combine visual fragments from a myriad of sources, such as online and archival images, and personal photographs, which collapse past and present. Autobiographic in nature, these are works that, ‘dealing with internal and private curiosities’, as the artist says, address how in a digitised world we use images to construct a sense of self, or experience and try to understand one another in a complex social reality.

Date: 1977-1978 / Edition of 40 (#1/40) / Paper size: 8 x 10 inches / Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) produced an extraordinary body of work acclaimed for its singularity of style and range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her focus was on the relationship with her body as both the object of the gaze and the active subject behind the camera, and in the works on view we see a testing of the boundaries of bodily experience in addition to a sophisticated understanding of space and form, derived from Woodman’s knowledge of art history and her engagement with and enquiry into her medium. Often photographed in empty or sparsely furnished rooms, in some images Woodman quite literally becomes one with her surroundings, with the contours of her form blurred by movement, or altered by light and shadow. In others she uses the physical body literally as a framework in which to construct and alter a material identity, summoning classical or religious imagery through formal or symbolic means.

Edition of 40 (#4/40) / Paper size: 8 x 10 inches / Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) produced an extraordinary body of work acclaimed for its singularity of style and range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her focus was on the relationship with her body as both the object of the gaze and the active subject behind the camera, and in the works on view we see a testing of the boundaries of bodily experience in addition to a sophisticated understanding of space and form, derived from Woodman’s knowledge of art history and her engagement with and enquiry into her medium. Often photographed in empty or sparsely furnished rooms, in some images Woodman quite literally becomes one with her surroundings, with the contours of her form blurred by movement, or altered by light and shadow. In others she uses the physical body literally as a framework in which to construct and alter a material identity, summoning classical or religious imagery through formal or symbolic means.