A Modern Hallucination

I recently began working with self-portraiture, which led to the creation of a character named Joyce. Within elaborately staged large format photographs I draw upon personal experience to perform critical studies into modern rituals of beauty and seduction. Objects once perceived as radical, innovative, fun and nutritious – an electronic anti-wrinkle mask, computer equipment from the 1980s, baby oil, a tin of cold meat – have become joyless and oppressive. Joyce appears alone, consumed by artifice. Her glazed appearance acting as a mirror to the exhaustion felt whilst bearing the dead weight of constructed femininity.