Chowsie

Chowsie (2023) is a work on canvas from the solo exhibition The Vaudeville Express by Billy Coulthurst, first presented at Benny Boy’s in Berlin. The series is based on the 1962 film Gypsy starring Natalie Wood, which through distinct material translations interprets aspects of the scenography, the soundtrack, and, in this instance, Woods’s fictional pet dog.  

In Chowsie, the dog’s long fur obscures its gaze, while also forming a veil to emphasise a self-conscious materiality in the painting. The relationship between the fur and the light forms an interchangeable movement in the painting's focus between subject and surface, drawing the attention to both the painted texture and the representational form. The work thus considers the construction and performance of a persona, relating the staging of the self in Gypsy to the constructed personas and identity in the context of contemporary art.

Chowsie also recalls the 19th century animal portraits Bob (1876) and Minnay (1862) by Edouard Manet. The layering of these distinct cultural references forms what Coulthurst calls “the vaudeville express”, a hypothetical train route, wherein subjects become critically aware of their own object-hood, continually performing a tension between subject and object within the apparatus of painting.