Window

Storm Tharp’s meditative portraits begin with water: spreading the liquid across his paper, he then drops ink into it while it dries, allowing the water to carry it into eddies of liquid grey and black. Out of these pools of shading Tharp builds his subjects, their faces stained by these distinctive ink markings. Tharp has spoken of his interest in ‘identity as performance’, acknowledging the character masks of Noh theatre and the intense psychological gestures of Bernini, but as they play across the faces of the subjects, these ink forms seem to translate thought into a more ambiguous visual language. In Window, part of an exhibition entitled Ashby Lee Collinson (every portrait of which featured the performance artist named in the show’s title), Tharp combines his characteristic inks with a realistic, albeit stylised, mode of representation. Attending closely to the contours of Collinson’s face, hair and hand, Tharp gives them a fuller three-dimensionality that stands out against the flat planes of her grey top and the mottled backdrop that carries the barest suggestion of a window. Yet while Tharp works to draw attention to the physical qualities through which his subject’s sense of identity is communicated, what is ultimately conveyed is more elusive; her hand across her face, ink pooling across her face and arm, Tharp leaves us with a picture of Collinson that is difficult to read – a testament to the complexity of depicting inward identity in outward performance.