On the Prowl

At first, I think I can see the hunter, but not the prey, in what I take to be a picture of delicious anticipation, of the tension before a pounce. Then I realise our hunter is already rapturously absorbed, in continual pursuit of a prey that is as much internal as it is out in the world.

The first reading of the painting takes a cue from the title of the exhibition for which it was made: Cougar. A quick and dirty, trope-affirming caption might be ‘Here is an older woman on the prowl – with hormonal support’. The second, revised reading remembers Milly Thompson’s unabashed demand for the older woman’s sensual grrrrrratification. This hunter is made up of carnal ciphers: the model’s unbridled pose, the paint’s persuasive intimation of flesh and a calligraphic crest of silver hair. Peonies, textiles, bubbles, floating sherds of terracotta pots are not camouflage for the body so much as its compositional allies in some reimagined form of Japanese flower arranging that, not obliged to honour realist space, takes a holiday from gravity. The paint is laid down, a matter of design, expressing an erotics of ‘oh wouldn’t it be lovely’: a declaration of a will to be pleasured in – and despite – our grey wreck of a world.

It should not be left unsaid that the arse dominates. (Milly enjoyed the word ‘arse’.) The knickers are… ‘inspired by’ is not the right term. They are the repossession of a scene in Italy, when a woman’s accidental flash in front of some workmen disclosed a lacy design that, the artist thought, could be mistaken for pubic hair. All too delectable to pass up. The hunter’s buttocks are decisively clad, but the gusset threatens to slip; the bitty polyester lace promises to be quite unpleasant between the teeth. And yes, from the front, a careless eye moving quickly might think it sees a histrionic bush.

And then, where cheek and thigh meet, there is that – what? Flesh-coloured swag? Ah, but it is not flesh-coloured. It is flesh. This is sagging skin made ornamental. Another act of repossession. Milly thoroughly enjoyed the artist’s power to make people look. Here, she makes us look at this flaccidity, this surrender. Isn’t it marvellous?

Sometimes (but only sometimes), Milly felt guilty about her attraction to surfaces. The received understanding is that they are superficial. But surface is where pattern thrives and touch comes into being. All of life is patterned, and touch might be what saves us all in a world that increasingly turns on abstractions. And anyway, even the shallowest, silliest romances can be apertures onto the bladed social mechanisms that slice through the core of everything

^{Hunter Watching the Beach is a planned acquisition. It is included in the exhibition Milly Thompson: My Body Temperature is Feeling Good, 28 March – 30 August, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.}

^{Sally O’Reilly is a writer and member of Big Throw performance collective. Recent books include Help in Cucumbers, published by JOAN, and The Body in Contemporary Art, published by Thames & Hudson.}