At Maximillian William gallery in London, a polite strip of monochrome lines the walls: ‘Triple Threat’, the British artist Somaya Critchlow’s first show dedicated solely to drawing, is comprised of 41 works. Mounted in frames largely similar in shape and size, some white but most black, all but ten circumnavigate the space in a single formation, interrupted by a small library of past and present publications from the artist. A kind of epilogue to this black and white trail, aesthetically each of the titles speaks to the palette that typically characterises Critchlow’s paintings, which leans to the 1970s, with covers of brown and green and orange. Indeed, even the latest catalogue, designed by Kaiya Waerea, boasts lettering in a rich red foil.
Of the drawings, all of which were produced between 2023-24, two in particular – neighbouring portraits of Black women, the artist’s primary subject – highlight the wide scope of Critchlow’s protagonists. In one, made in pencil, a figure poses seductively with her knees outstretched and hands clutched to her chest, her round breasts pushed together between elbows. Her head tilted sideways, she glances toward the viewer, while the flowers of her babydoll are a nod to the cute, sexy and playful. Beside her is a more abstract interpretation of the female nude; produced in Japanese ink on calligraphy paper, this woman’s body appears bare save for a pair of thigh highs. Her limbs are similarly open, but her eyes are closed as her head nods downwards.
‘I’m fascinated by the nude. I’m fascinated by all the fuss around the nude, I’m fascinated with it endlessly,’ Critchlow explained last year in a video for Dulwich Picture Gallery, a space she has been familiar with since childhood (and where, it was announced recently, her first solo public institution show in the UK will open in 2025). This preoccupation with the naked body, and more specifically the naked body of Black women, is communicated across her oeuvre; subjects are rarely if ever fully dressed, sometimes pictured in the act of removing garments, other times adorned with just a bra, stockings or gloves. Wholly sensual with a corresponding confidence, they invite a kind of intimacy, an attribute mirrored in the small scale the artist employs often, which asks the viewer to get close.
Curated by the American writer and critic Hilton Als, who penned the essay Cutie Pie: On Somaya Critchlow: Paintings and Drawings at The Flag Art Foundation, on the occasion of her debut institutional solo show in America last year, ‘Triple Threat’ is described by the gallery as a collaboration. In the artist’s drawings are echoes of the former’s own observational work marrying the personal, historical and poetic, explored most prominently in his celebrated book, The Women. Published in 1996, it considers the trajectories of Als’ own mother, Malcolm X’s mother, and Dorothy Dean, a little known but core fixture of Andy Warhol’s circle. In the new catalogue, Als continues this strain of portraiture, recalling his late uncle, a man whose copies of Jet and Ebony first introduced him to a version of the Black female body familiar to those here.
‘Critchlow’s figures are forceful entities, often alive in their pleasure and the pleasure of being looked at,’ Als observed in the 2023 essay, wherein he first made the connection with his uncle’s magazine collection. ‘Critchlow’s figures don’t mind being looked at. That makes them feel alive in a prohibitive world where we can be “cancelled” if we say too much, see too much, eat too much, etc. Her characters are voluptuaries who make us feel that way too. They live inside their flesh and inside Critchlow’s imagination – a place you want to live in too.’
Furthermore, with ‘Triple Threat’, Critchlow gestures to Goya and Howgarth, artists by whom she has long been fascinated and whose impact is keenly felt in the tone of the drawings and some of the motifs that accompany the women, amongst them bats and cats. Perhaps what is most discernable in this new work, however, is the additional characters: Critchlow’s figures have often been depicted alone – or, as Als has distinguished previously, single – but here we’re introduced to couples, a woman with a child. In at least one picture there are three figures, two of them active participants in the moment and a third observing. The invitation we then gather, our invitation into these scenes, has been extended.
'Triple Threat' at Maximillian William gallery in London runs until 8 February 2024
