At the time this painting was acquired for the collection Crowley’s work was centred on common domestic objects. The artist emphasized the reality of the objects and placed them in illusionistic spaces, where they served as metaphors in much the same way as Dutch still life from the seventeenth century. In the first years of the 1980s there was rioting in several cities in Britain, in particular in South London area of Brixton. Kitchen Lifewas painted at the time of the riots when the artist was living nearby. He wrote of the work ‘One of the main ideas behind the painting is anthropomorphism. The meat mincer and table together seem like some kind of figure. The cheese grater like a tower block (a latter Tower of Babel?), and the salt-cellar another (but smaller) figure. The window shatters, sending glass across the room; outside the rioting continues … Another idea was the need to make the familiar appear unfamiliar, the parochial and domestic seem alien and threatening. On a technical note, the painting is glazed grisaille; this lends it a curious luminosity’.

Cries & Whispers New Works for the British Council Collection 1988