MILLY THOMPSON: My Body Temperature is Feeling Good

MILLY THOMPSON

My Body Temperature is Feeling Good

05 June–24 August 2025

Opening Event: Wed 04 June, 6–10PM

‘Pleasure is a very interesting political space to reside in…’ Milly Thompson, 2021

My Body Temperature is Feeling Good presents the work of British artist Milly Thompson (1964–2022). Part of the renowned artist group BANK, Milly went on to establish a solo practice as a prolific painter, sculptor, video artist and writer. This exhibition presents works from 2010 onwards, in which she irreverently lampooned the hegemonic force of luxury consumer culture on women and celebrated the middle-aged female body for its libidinal power. Across the exhibition a strongly rendered sense of the female gaze is established, privileging female desire, glamour, and a purposeful slipperiness of artistic voice and persona that constantly questions the stakes of making art.

The exhibition captures the particular blend of irony and sincerity that characterised Thompson’s most recent work, which explored romantic novels and sun-drenched summer holidays as spaces for escapism and sensual self-reinvention. Her paintings are informed by sources as diverse as Francis Picabia, Shirley Valentine, Japanese woodcuts, and emojis, establishing a languid and luxurious visual language with which to capture cellulite, sunbathing, and lobster with sorbet. Works such as Hunter Watching the Beach (2016) and La Vergne in the Afternoon (2017) encapsulate her irreverent reclamation of the exoticised and eroticised female nude, exploring the art historical trope for its contemporary resonance, inserting middle aged bodies into the frame in heat-drenched colours. Later paintings, such as Temple Creation (2020) and Scuba Sauvage Azure Bleu (2021) assert new and confident visual languages and painterly techniques, incorporating ink washes, experimental canvases, lyrical lines, and codes of emojis to express the frustrations and triumphs of the female body finding agency amongst the restrictive distortions of mediated beauty.

Alongside her paintings, the exhibition will celebrate Thompson’s work as a graphic artist, sharing artist books from across her practice, featuring collaborations with fellow artist and friend Alison Jones. Spreads from their satirical take on Vogue fashion magazine as part of the project Vuoto (2012) will be shown alongside other publications and poster works, texts, video works and manifestoes such as I Choose Painting (2016). These illuminate Thompson’s network of collaborators, precocious interdisciplinarity, and distinctive voice as it moves through processes of self-discovery with humour and anger, to forge a renewed artistic practice in mid-life. As Thompson asserts, ‘Art is a place to experiment, make mistakes and understand failure. It provides an alternative route to making absolute or well-researched proclamations.’ The exhibition will include works from her last major project The Moon, The Sea & The Matriarch, which took place at Timespan, Helmsdale (2019) which saw her make interventions across the village alongside an exhibition of paintings and other works.