Pat Brassington - You're So Vein

In her new body of work Brassington uses themes that have continued to fascinate her over the course of her career as an artist but they seem to have taken a darker turn.

There are recurrent motifs; hair, limbs and holes. The figures depicted are vaguely monstrous. Their features are too large or too small and they have unexpected tails or hairs. They are misshapen, almost hallucinogenic.

Are we in a private domain of carpets and curtains and compromised bodies? The figures seem self-absorbed. Their identity obscured. Faces are turned, cropped out or covered with hair. Their pre-occupations seem to be altogether domestic and personal.

Yet there is also a suggestion of the theatrical - the way curtains meet floors suggesting a stage. The balletic pointe of what looks like pigs trotters, a curious pink mouth forming a chorister's "O".

In her unique way, Brassington blurs the boundaries of the real and imagined. She strips photography of its authority, bestowing it instead with the logic of dream/memory or fantasy. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. The prosaic becomes loaded with meaning.