MILLY THOMPSON: My Body Temperature is Feeling Good
5th June, 2025 – 24th August, 2025
Goldsmiths CCA
St James’
New Cross
London SE14 6AD
‘Pleasure is a very interesting political space to reside in…’ Milly Thompson, 2021
A new exhibition, My Body Temperature is Feeling Good, brings together a selection of works by British artist Milly Thompson (1964–2022), offering a clear-eyed and often irreverent look at her singular artistic voice. Known for her early work with the provocative London collective BANK, Thompson later forged a solo practice that refused easy categorisation. Spanning painting, sculpture, text and video, her work approached the middle-aged female body not with anxiety or apology, but with wit, pleasure and resistance.
The exhibition focuses on work made after 2010, a period in which Thompson returned to figuration with fresh urgency. At its centre is a confrontation with the trappings of consumer culture—its glamour, its aspirations, its quiet cruelties—and how these bear down on women, especially as they age.
Rather than reject these codes outright, Thompson absorbed and twisted them, producing a body of work steeped in irony and desire. Sunbathing bodies, melting sorbet, soft flesh and holiday novels appear not as objects of scorn, but as material through which she reclaims agency and ease.
There is something both theatrical and deeply personal in the way these images unfold. In Hunter Watching the Beach (2016) and La Vergne in the Afternoon (2017), Thompson restages the art historical nude on her own terms, inserting older bodies into compositions that are saturated with light and colour. The tones are sultry, the gestures relaxed, the intent unmistakably assertive. Gone is the cool, detached muse. In her place stands a subject in possession of her own gaze.
Later works such as Temple Creation (2020) and Scuba Sauvage Azure Bleu (2021) experiment further with texture and form. Washes of ink, fragmentary drawing and motifs drawn from digital vernacular—emojis, shorthand, visual codes—circulate within the frame. But there is no reliance on novelty. These symbols appear less as commentary and more as tools: an evolving visual language, used to express a body in motion, one shaped by contradictions, humour and endurance.
The exhibition also includes a selection of Thompson’s graphic and collaborative work. Projects made with fellow artist Alison Jones are displayed here, including excerpts from Vuoto (2012), a sharp and playful deconstruction of fashion magazines. Alongside them are posters, pamphlets, video works and writing that further reveal Thompson’s commitment to art as a space of doubt, invention and autonomy. I Choose Painting (2016), a manifesto of sorts, makes her position clear: “Art is a place to experiment, make mistakes and understand failure. It provides an alternative route to making absolute or well-researched proclamations.”
The last major project included in the exhibition, The Moon, The Sea & The Matriarch (Timespan, Helmsdale, 2019), saw Thompson extend her practice beyond the gallery, working in and around the Scottish village to create a constellation of images and gestures—both public and intimate—that speak to legacy, feminism and mythology.
About Milly Thompson
Milly Thompson was a founding member of the artists’ collective BANK, active from 1994 to 2003. With BANK, she exhibited at major institutions including Tate Modern, the ICA and Whitechapel Gallery. Her solo practice included commissions and exhibitions at Peer UK, South London Gallery and Focal Point Gallery, where she produced projects such as Save Southend-on-Sea Central Library (2009) and BOGOF (2016).
She co-authored C21ST Recent History (2016) with Alison Jones, a publication charting a decade of shared work and friendship. Thompson received multiple awards over the course of her career, including research grants from Goldsmiths, support from the Arts Council, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the British School at Rome, and the Elephant Trust.
Work by BANK is held in the collections of Tate, the British Council, MoMA New York, and Printed Matter NY. Thompson’s solo works are part of the collections at the British Library, Printed Matter NY, and Focal Point Gallery.
MILLY THOMPSON: My Body Temperature is Feeling Good opens on the 5th of June, 2025 until the 24th of August, 2025 at Goldsmiths CCA
©2025 Goldsmiths CCA
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