Eyes open, I breathe again | Alice Amati
This week, I’m writing about a bum on a bed. This particular bed is in the basement of Alice Amati, a small gallery in Fitzrovia that is hosting a group show this summer.
The bed (and the bum) was painted in oils by Inès Michelotto, an Italy-born, London-based artist who cites portraitists like Alice Neel and Paula Rego as influences. Accordingly, there’s quite some psychological intensity to these oil-painted glutes. The work is called ‘I love this side of you’.
The painting’s subject is face-down on some dark sheets. They’re prone, and somehow tense, despite lying in bed. The wall above, on which some grim-looking pillows are propped, seems to be sweaty, looming.
(In a nice touch, the curators have placed a lace pillow on which a porcelain crown is laid, by another artist Effe Minelli. in front of the painting. It seems laid there as tribute.)
The show notes contain a short story by Samuele Visentin, telling of a holiday romance, which starts and ends in an atmosphere of ennui, even panic. At one point the protagonist reads, with distress, the recent UK supreme court verdict on the legal definition of a woman.
“Why make it about you even, when it’s about independent will and right to self-affirmation? Why the fury against m-to-f individuals specifically? Here is the outline of inverted misogyny for the financially capable,” he writes.
As a viewer, it’s tempting to read Michelotto’s own identity as a trans woman into what I at least see as an atmosphere of dread and tension in this image. Or maybe I’m misreading the frequency of this particular art-induced psychological charge. But there’s a charge there either way, vibrating in that basement in Fitzrovia.
Eyes open, I breathe again is at Alice Amati (London). 10 July - 09 August 2025