Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland: an ‘odd pairing’ for an exhibition?

At first glance, Beryl Cook (1926-2008) and Tom of Finland (1920- 1991) might seem “like an odd pairing for an exhibition”, said Osman Can Yerebakan in AnOther Magazine. The former was a hobby painter from Plymouth whose jolly depictions of “voluptuous small-town ladies” became extremely popular in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s; the latter, a gay Finnish emigrant to America who fetishised biker culture and created “euphoric” black-and-white fantasies of “sexual encounters between leather-clad hunks”.

Nevertheless, this show insists that the two shared more than a roughly contemporaneous lifespan: both artists, the exhibition’s curators point out, focused on curvy bodies and extravagant outfits; both examine unfiltered desires, if in very different ways. While Tom of Finland was explicit with his sexuality, Cook hid hers behind “tongue-in-cheek depictions of everyday life”. The result is a small but fascinating display that generates an “unlikely synergy”.