Intimacy

Intimacy examines the way artists over the past few decades have depicted different forms of close human relationship, not through overt displays of intimate behaviour, but through subtle and often unconscious forms of interaction between individuals. Our ability to identify such acts as revealing intimacy between those concerned depends on a deep awareness of social norms – which vary from culture to culture – and our instinctive interpretation of behaviour relating to them. Expressions of intimacy are present in relationships based on love, sex, camaraderie, family ties, friendship and other things, but the form they take will vary according to the nature and strength of the relationship and whether they are being expressed in public or private. This exhibition of paintings, drawn largely from the Arts Council Collection, looks at some of those forms of expression.