Tour Mickalene Thomas: All About Love with Lea Ogunlami and Ione Gamble

Take a short tour of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love in the company of presenter Lea Ogunlami and editor-in-chief of Polyester zine Ione Gamble.

This abridged walk through the 2025 Hayward Gallery exhibition begins with Thomas’ large-scale mixed media portraits of Black women in restful poses. Though these works have featured prominently in the exhibition’s promotion, Gamble feels that ‘there’s another element that comes from looking at these pieces in person, seeing how the light bounces off [them], and [their] different textures’. Ognulami picks up on the positivity of the paintings, suggesting, ‘the adornment of the rhinestones screams self-love.’

Their tour takes in the exhibition’s two living room installations, which each present ‘a glamorous space, a warm female space’, and Thomas’ photography – for a long time part of the artist’s preparatory studies, Thomas has now begun to present her photos as works within their self. 

Common themes that carry through this tour include the omnipresence of significant figures in the artist;s life, and her decontextualisation, deconstruction and recreation of works from the arts canon in pieces such Guernica (Resist #3), which draws on Picasso’s 1937 work of the same name.