LONDON.- Dulwich Picture Gallery presents The Chamber, London-based British artist Somaya Critchlow’s debut solo show in a UK public institution, made in response to the Gallery’s Collection of historic paintings.
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Having known the Collection since childhood, in February 2025, Critchlow returns to exhibit a new body of work following a period of art historical and technical research, and in-depth observation of the Old Master paintings.
The one-room display features six new works commissioned by the Gallery, including three large figurative paintings. Sketches created by the artist throughout her research are also presented, alongside Old Master works.
Critchlow was struck by the narrative paintings in the Collection including those by Peter Paul Rubens, Peter Lely and Anthony van Dyck. She is intrigued by the stories behind them, which are rooted in religion, literature, history, the imagination and mythology, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the ancient epic poem to which Critchlow herself was continually drawn to while creating her new works. She has often contemplated how these stories can mask complex power structures.
Drawing from the classical poses and dynamic gestures of the Old Masters, Critchlow is fascinated by history painting and the nude. Her own figures hover on the threshold of allowing their stories to be known intimately, while at the same time holding their distance.
Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979) – in which fairy stories are retold and power dynamics are upturned – has been a constant reference for Critchlow. Critchlow’s paintings find synergies with iconic works such as Gerrit Dou’s Woman Playing a Clavichord (c.1665) where a woman, seated inside the chamber readied for a lover, ambiguously holds the viewer’s gaze. The Chamber – the display’s title – evokes a place where narratives unfold: from an intimate room or a public meeting place, to the chambers of the heart.
Dr Lucy West, Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery, said: “When I look at Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 18th-century Young Woman [included within the display] I see two things. An artist at the height of their powers, applying oil paint in thrilling ways. I also see a woman, who is real, fantastical and unknowable – all at the same time. In Somaya Critchlow’s new works for The Chamber I find this same feeling. Through her masterful paintings, Critchlow permits us to place fresh eyes on historic art in the most exciting of ways – disentangling threads, and then entangling them all over again”.
The Chamber is part of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s ‘Unlocking Paintings’ series: thought-provoking displays that present new perspectives on the Gallery’s Collection.
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