BERYL COOK / TOM OF FINLAND
15 May to 25 August
This major new exhibition will bring the two cultural icons’ – Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland – works together for the first time, and will reveal interconnected ideas surrounding gender, sexuality, taste and class. It will explore the perhaps unexpected parallels in the artists’ practices – connected by their distinct ways of hyperrealising the body, both artists produced works thatand deny shame. A self-taught painter, Cook (1926-2008) was renowned for her exuberant images of everyday life, particularly her portrayals of larger than-life women in nightclubs, pubs and at hen parties. Tom of Finland’s (1920-1991) pioneering depictions of homosexual machismo broadly represented queer, leather and muscle communities and influenced the likes of The Village People, Robert Mapplethorpe and Freddie Mercury.
