Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is pleased to present Ad Libidinum, London-based artist George Wilkin's first solo exhibition at the gallery. Painting on linen over a luminous umber base, Wilkin draws from a wide range of sources: vintage erotica, contemporary fashion magazines, merchandising, and music videos. Her motifs are superimposed, each painting acting as a visual portmanteau of desire and power. Oftentimes three or four distinct images are overlaid to compound their narrative qualities: dialogues slipping in and out in a Rorschach-like test of the viewer's own subliminal desires.
In Ad Libidinum, fashion and clothing are primary subjects, acting as symbols of eroticism, and public and private expression, as well as that of repression or constriction. The artist considers how clothes express an individual's identity, uniform-like as they conceal or contain.