I make self-portraits and I recently developed a character named Joyce. I build sets and create scenes for her; imaginary bedrooms in which I perform critical studies into modern rites of seduction and beauty, and the laboured construction of femininity. 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.
