Mickalene Thomas: All About Love

Mickalene Thomas is renowned for her large-scale paintings of Black women radically luxuriating and in repose, adorned with vivid patterns and ravishing, brilliant rhinestones, as well as her innovative use of collage techniques.

Thomas’s depictions of women from her circle of friends, family, lovers and models are loving, celebratory and glamorous, with her alluring and self-assured muses exuding comfort and pleasure. Her art is steeped in contemporary feminist literature and the exhibition title pays loving homage to the late American author and activist Bell Hooks.

Featuring paintings, photographs, collages and installations, this vibrant exhibition transforms the concrete brutalism of the Hayward Gallery with brightly coloured bespoke wallpapers, textiles and furnishings nostalgically evoking the artist’s 1970s childhood.

Co-organized by the Hayward Gallery and The Broad, in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, this is an international touring exhibition that comes to London fresh from showing at The Broad in Los Angeles and at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

ALSO SHOWING AT HAYWARD GALLERY

Also showing at Hayward Gallery during this period is Danger Came Smiling, a retrospective looking back over 50 years of work by the pioneering feminist artist Linder.

A single Hayward Gallery entrance ticket grants access to both exhibitions.