In The Flesh: Celia Hempton

In today’s saturated art world, few paintings stand out as much as those by British artist Celia Hempton. Featuring images of male and female genitalia rendered in pastel tones, they confront contemporary issues relating to gender, sex, art and society. Hailing from family of painters in Stroud and a graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, her dynamic approach to the medium is manifested in a subtle degree of variety. “What ties the work together is an interest in nature,” she says. “To make these paintings I put myself in certain situations where I am forced to deal with and analyse my instinctual feelings”.
Her most celebrated body of work, “Chat Random”, was first shown at Southard Reid in 2014. An ongoing series of portraits documenting users of the eponymous sex chat website, they depict men in various states of undress and poses, sometimes gazing blankly at the camera, other times masturbating. Her motivation was sociopolitical: “I began these works quite consciously thinking about my position as a woman, how I engage with sex on the internet, and how unbalanced the whole thing is,” she explains. “But now I’ve reached a point where I made so many of them that those feelings are still there, but much more complicated.”
 

“Caspar”, 2014, Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 35.5 cm, courtesy of Southard Reid

 
 
Here, Hempton’s talent lies in her ability to capture her subjects in the fleeting moments spent together online, carefully reproducing the dull light from their monitors and even the pixelated effect of dodgy webcams. The paint is thick, the colours are somber, and the figures are often blurred and difficult to read, turning some of the images into abstract compositions. Yet in studio work with sitting models such as “Caspar” (2014), Hempton’s painting is bright and sharp. In her words, this series is based on a respectful, positive and intimate relationship with her models, often friends and acquaintances.
The artist came to these figurative works through her previous paintings of landscape and objects. She tried to insert figures in them, until eventually the landscapes turned into bodies. Hempton considers her subjects as still lifes, “bowl[s] of fruit that I’ve never seen before”. Indeed, her images also conjure references to still life masters Paul Ce?zanne, Andre? Derain, the Fauves and even Frank Auerbach, showing a critical awareness of the role of painting in art history. Yet Hempton operates in this historical context only to undermine it from within.
In this regard, one of her most interesting collaborations has been with the gay porn actor Colby Keller, who recently posed for her. Objectifying Keller’s body, Hempton found a way of subverting the traditional relationship be- tween the male artist and the female model, which is a classic example of how patriarchal society influences culture. In the recent New York exhibition “The Female Gaze, Part Two: Women look at Men”, curated by John Cheim, Hempton has been included in the specific tradition of depicting the male body from the perspective of the female gaze. “It was an all female show featuring artists who are heroes of mine – Lynda Benglis, Dana Schutz, Joan Semmel, Alice Neel,” she says. In this exhibition, Hempton’s paintings claimed the right to be associated with such pivotal artists, challenging the taboo of depicting the phallus in art.

“United Kingdom”, 12th March, 2015, oil on Linen, 30 x 35