To be transparent, I own an artwork by Nicole Thomson, whose new exhibition Love Exposure at TCB is the subject of this review. The work I live with is a pencil drawing of a love heart whose shape is repeated in expanding concentric rings from the centre of the page out past its margins. The love heart also radiates light/energy: a striated, shiny cone emanates from its core, cloaking the paper in a second layer of lead. What rescues this work from the twee trajectory we might otherwise ascribe to a love heart is the latent violence of the object. The pencil layers are so worked up, so dense, so utterly obsessional and claustrophobic, that the process of drawing here begins to unpick its own paper support. The artist’s concentrated application of pencil has, in several areas, put holes in the paper—worn it down to nothing. This violent interplay between a medium and its support is a useful entry point to Love Exposure, which marries themes of love, care and desire with a dark, cannibalistic edge.