Benjamin Senior United Kingdom, b. 1982

The present works are from Benjamin Senior’s recent exhibition Minor Streets (September – November 2023), which explores urban scenes and alienation in London, thus continuing the artist’s concern with social critique and observation.

The first painting, Colour Play (2023), consists of two young women of colour, distracted by phones, casually walking past a cosmetics store with female mannequins in the shop window. “Colour play” references the disparity between women of colour and the white mannequins in the shop windows, all of whom have different haircuts and hair colours, ranging from green, red, blue, and white.

The second painting, Thank U Next (2023), shows three individuals waiting at a bus stop, mostly disengaged with their phones, and a billboard showing the pop-sensation Ariana Grande advertising her 2019 perfume Thank U Next. The thick black frame on the advertising billboard recalls the visual appearance of smartphones; the title references the perfume and is shorthand social media language, epitomising the disengaged lifestyle of those depicted.

Senior’s work has a critical edge, with his portrayal of alienation alongside cosmetics displays questioning the role of our image-infatuated environment in shaping often unrealistic and unhealthy expectations and standards surrounding female beauty and communal belonging. Other artists from the collection who explore this theme throughout their work include Sara Cwynar and Cindy Sherman, with the former particularly noteworthy for her incisive deconstruction of female imagery and norms in the digital age through photoshopped collages. Just like Senior, Cwynar maintains a certain ambiguity in her work by portraying the cliches and ideals of advertising while simultaneously undermining and questioning them.  

Having been painted in meticulous layers of egg tempera, a technique most common in Renaissance painting, the two paintings are striking for their technical mastery and sophistication. Senior says of his method that “[t]he image is built up over dozens of thin layers. Over time the colours are carefully tuned” (2023).