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A Mirror to Vanity: Richard Dean Hughes, Laura Lancaster, Lyle Perkins, Glen Pudvine, Maria Szakats & Katie Tomlinson

Past exhibition
26 January - 24 February 2024
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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Katie Tomlinson, Mirror of Vanity, 2024
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Katie Tomlinson, Mirror of Vanity, 2024

Katie Tomlinson

Mirror of Vanity, 2024
Ink on paper, aluminium frame
20.7 x 20.7 cm
8 1/8 x 8 1/8 in.
Unique
Courtesy of the artist and Brooke Benington
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Further images

  • (View a larger image of thumbnail 1 ) Maria Szakats, A attacking P, 2024
  • (View a larger image of thumbnail 2 ) Maria Szakats, A attacking P, 2024
Mirror of Vanity, 2024 acts as a supplementary work to Tomlinson’s painting Ssssssssssself Care, 2024 which features in the group exhibition A Mirror to Vanity. It nods to the mirrored...
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Mirror of Vanity, 2024 acts as a supplementary work to Tomlinson’s painting Ssssssssssself Care, 2024 which features in the group exhibition A Mirror to Vanity. It nods to the mirrored shield Achilles used when slaying/murdering Medusa the Gorgon (depicted in the aforementioned work having her “hair” washed in a salon). It acknowledges that history (and mythologies) have mostly been written from the male perspective. In Ovid’s telling of the Medusa myth, Poseidon rapes the young Medusa in Athena's temple. Despite the young girl's innocence, it is she who is cursed by Athena - not Poseidon - giving Medusa her snake hair and deadly gaze.


The mirror form itself has been taken from the artist’s own handmirror, and its polished silver surface appears lacerated, perhaps in an act of self-harm. She examines the gendered idea of vanity, the male gaze in art and society and a shifting of perspectives which we are now, finally, starting to see. In the words of John Berger in Ways of Seeing “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.”

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Exhibitions

A Mirror to Vanity, Brooke Benington, London (2024)
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  • Katie Tomlinson

    Katie Tomlinson

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