Courtauld Gallery · West End
Salman Toor: Drawings
A focused display of works on paper — ink, charcoal, gouache — showing how drawing is central to Toor's practice: border checkpoints, still-life compositions, and reinterpretations of historical paintings. Shown in the Drawings Gallery alongside the main solo show.
Under a single bare bulb, inside a glass case, a heap of bodies has melted into one: a stray hand with painted nails lies over one sleeping head, and a foot pokes out through a bent arm. This is Fag Puddle in Vitrine (2021), which the Courtauld bought in 2024, from a motif Toor affectionately calls "fag puddles".
The display accompanies Someone Like You, the paintings show on Floor 3: a focused group of works on paper in ink, charcoal and gouache. Toor learned to paint in the US, but calls drawing "second nature". You meet his recurring motifs: travellers at border control checks, still lifes, and old pictures retold, like Three Mascots (2023), after a Bruegel grisaille of three soldiers. Many faces belong to friends; drawing someone, he has said, is "like praying for someone".
It's in the Drawings Gallery on Floor 1. The museum's page puts it in the Permanent Collection + Exhibition ticket (£16 for adults, free for under-18s), which also covers the paintings.
No et perdis
Fag Puddle in Vitrine
Look for a glass case under one bare bulb, holding a pile of limbs and drowsy faces melted together, a loose hand with painted nails flopped over a head.
Three Mascots
Bruegel's three soldiers become three figures marching under a starry black sky, arms raised to a blank sheet, the front one in a beribboned hat with a tambourine, a heeled boot behind.
Beach
A young man with windblown white hair walks out of charcoal-grey surf towards you, his body and the cloth at his hips washed in yellow gouache.
The border control drawings
Figures alone and in groups waiting at border checks, the same motif Toor paints in his border series in the show upstairs.
Ideal per a
- Veïns que ja ho han vist tot
- Friquis
Amb infants
Under-18s go free with the Permanent Collection + Exhibition ticket.
També a Courtauld Gallery
Ara a prop
iArt déco: l'edat d'or del disseny de cartells (Art deco: the golden age of poster design)
London Transport Museum
iMichael Landy: Ruïnes futures (Michael Landy: Future Ruins)
Sir John Soane's Museum
iTim Walker's Fairyland: Amor i llegendes (Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends)
National Portrait Gallery
A prop
Crèdits de les imatges
8
- Art déco: l'edat d'or del disseny de cartells (Art deco: the golden age of poster design)Courtesy of London Transport Museum
- Michael Landy: Ruïnes futures (Michael Landy: Future Ruins)© Michael Landy. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Prudence Cuming Fine Art Photography.
- Tim Walker's Fairyland: Amor i llegendes (Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends)Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery
- Courtauld GalleryAnthony O'Neil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- London Transport MuseumColin Park / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Hayward GalleryMykReeve / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Sir John Soane's MuseumSarah Smith / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- National Portrait GalleryIstvánka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0