Mirror Girls : Lady Diamond Thug, mirror, nail varnish, 2006 Lil Bubbla, mirror, nail varnish, 2006 Queen Fiend, mirror, nail varnish, 2006
Celebrated Sobriquets (aka Always Known As) – Mirror Girls includes Lady Diamond Thug, Lil Bubbla and Queen Fiend (mirror, nail varnish, 2006).
My work explores the construction of identity through visual culture. More recently I have been using the nicknames and alter egos teenagers give themselves, often seen written on walls in urban environments and used as alias names on early community sites such as Myspace.
Part of the project includes a Myspace portal that I created, in which teenagers’ profile text is reinterpreted and spoken through the voices of young Victorian girls and showgirls. https://myspace.com/celebratedsobriquets
The work examines playing at being adult, imitation, performance, the fear of growing old, and the desire to fit in.
The title Celebrated Sobriquets is a play on Tennessee Williams’ The Celebrated Soubrette, described as a “slapstick tragedy” about an ageing showgirl whose eyes are plucked out by birds as she attempts to relive her performance routines in order to impress new acquaintances.
The shift from “Soubrette” to “Sobriquet” reflects the focus on pseudonyms and constructed names. In Williams’ work, female characters often inhabit idealised versions of themselves, attempting to convince others that these constructed identities are real. In Celebrated Sobriquets, this is echoed through figures adopting aliases such as “Lady Diamond” or “Thug Angel”.
The installation at The Surgery incorporates these names constructed from discarded teenage clothing, which I painstakingly shaped into childlike bubble lettering to form these bombastic nicknames.
The work is shown alongside mirror pieces which also incorporate the nicknames and portraits of young girls. The viewer sees their own reflection within the faces of the girls, merging self-image with constructed identity. These mirror works incorporate nail varnish as a painted surface.
The source imagery for the girls is taken from photographs by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), whose photographic archive primarily consisted of young girls and music hall performers.
Medium : Etched mirror, nail varnish, phosphorescent medium, lighting Size : 47cm x 63cm x 4cm
