John Hurrell – 7 September, 2021

Ten watercolours—with mottled stroked brusherly textures—are presented by Imogen Taylor in an online Michael Lett viewing room, their compositions aligned around single or paired naked female bodies in intimate erotic display, and the occasional bathroom user freaking over lockdown panic buying.

Elegantly stylised so that spherical, conical or curved-edged forms dominate, these reclining, standing, bending or sitting figures (all women) make up geometric compositions with body parts sometimes connected, or else hovering disconnected, or buckled. Occasionally too the co-ordinated body parts double as faces.

Though not really about space or light, these delicate watercolours reference Cubism and Orphism, and at times seem to allude to a simplified Charles Demuth, or Julian Hooper, or even perhaps the mannequins of Giorgio de Chirico.

Sticking to very elemental geometric forms they avoid detail, and extoll the female nude—with most of the poses exuding erotic intent. On pink mounts, they depict bedroom and bathroom furniture that with foreshortened perspective set out the viewed bodies in spatial depth.

Watercolours is a joyful show that celebrates same-sex female desire and carnality. These works are compact and dense, yet sweetly playful. Optimistic and positive, they are sexy, exuberant and unabashedly, happily, horny—as one surely would hope.

John Hurrell

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