Mirror of Vanity, 2024 acts as a supplementary work to Tomlinson’s painting Ssssssssssself Care, 2024 that 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 afore mentioned 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 her 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 it’s 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.”
8 1/8 x 8 1/8 in.
