Female Trouble

Ancient & Modern presents Brian Chalkley’s first solo exhibition in over ten years in London with an installation of fourteen watercolour paintings of women portrayed in fine prints and strong makeup. ‘Female Trouble’ takes its title from the eponymous film directed by John Waters (1974), featuring the actress Divine who simultaneously plays both the delinquent schoolgirl-prostitute ‘Dawn’ and the man who makes her pregnant.

The paintings’ individual titles are gleaned from the kind of things celebrities say in magazine interviews, vacuous but heartfelt. Meanwhile a more refined sense of salaciousness is suggested by one portrait based upon a painting in Tate Britain of the Duchess of Argyll. During the 1960s, her husband found polaroids of his wife performing fellatio on a headless man.

Each painting employs an accomplished teenage-tracer’s draughtsmanship, suggesting a kind of levity inherent in the various moments of ‘trouble’ they reference. Their cinematic ‘close up’ style framing further emphasises the sense of identity being performed, and draws a parallels to Chalkley’s important video work exploring queer identity and subculture.

• http://www.brucehaines.com/exhibitions/b...