Drawing on inspiration from a various array of sources such because the rape-revenge anime The Belladonna of Unhappiness, the work of Edvard Munch, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and Francisco Goya’s Disasters of Warfare prints and his research of the Duchess of Alba. “Afternoon’s Darkness” attracts on these chosen recourses to construct its personal imagery of horror and resurrection, of exclusion and creation.

Via this exhibition Critchlow continues her exploration of the feminine determine on the centre of portray in navigating notion, historical past and the complexity of picture making. The works within the present signify a shift, scaled as much as what Critchlow would seek advice from as “bigger mid-scale” work, conceived at a time of isolation and reflection in a small seaside city via spring.

One portray within the present references The Maids written by Jean Genet, which performs upon the home servant and the master-slave dichotomy. The maids are subjugated to tedious and repetitive labour that causes a hatred for his or her dominant mistress, inside their loathing there may be additionally hidden a fantasy for this identical dichotomy of subjugation. Critchlow typically presents the viewer with imagery that’s burdened by its personal existence, concurrently providing up self-contained alternate options for energy constructions and even the
chance of “no good”—simply because the maids who, unable to eradicate the place they fulfil, enact the homicide their mistress.

In Critchlow’s work imagery and concepts are reproduced and reframed from a private narrative, intimating inside ideas, and leaving the viewer on precarious grounds. Her work is commonly perceived as a commentary on sexuality, intercourse positivity and in flip empowerment, to a fault. It appears there’s a have to place her work as actively “good” or “constructive” as an alternative of the providing of autonomy. For what does it imply to be “good” or “constructive” relating to depictions of the feminine determine?

at Maximillian William, London
till November 19, 2022