In The Bridled Sweeties, 2024, bodies unfurl upwards in a crescendo of movements, from the crouching naked woman in the foreground to the pointing woman in a catsuit. Her turning body is answered by that of the pregnant woman parading in wide skirts, their hooped armature worn on the outside like exposed bones. The cage-like skirt of the central figure wraps its way around a crawling, crouching figure who clenches her fist. There’s a defiant sense of being subjugated to someone or something.Ideas of power, subjugation and hierarchy run throughout Walker’s work, but also a focus on that thin boundary between ecstasy, pleasure and pain.

Behind, in a counterpoint to the squatting figure, balled-up nude, a woman stretches, baring her torso. They pose and gesture purposefully, enacting an allegory perhaps, though as symbols they’re hard to pin down. For all the visual rhythm, there’s something more than a little dislocated about these female assemblages. They appear like separate apparitions, summoned from disparate moments in cultural memory, according to the hidden, intuitive logic of a dream.


The title of the work is taken from an essay by Angela Carter. about women’s underwear and the rise of capitalism. Underwear can restrict and reveal the body. Ella says: “The word ‘bridled’ means to bridle a horse as a means of controlling, the word can also mean to be enraged or resentful, ’sweeties’ is girlish. The figures in the painting are enraged or gentle.”