ALISON JACKSON: CONFIDENTIAL
December 15, 2007 – January 2008
Artist’s Opening Reception: Saturday, December 15, 7 – 9 pm
M+B
612 NORTH ALMONT DRIVE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90069
T 310 550 0050
F 310 550 0605
M+B is pleased to announce the exhibition ALISON JACKSON: CONFIDENTIAL, featuring Jackson’s controversial photographs that have astonished and sometimes shocked audiences worldwide. Her work goes where others fear to tread in her treatment of fame and celebrity. The exhibition is accompanied with the release of Jackson’s monograph, Alison Jackson: Confidential, published by TASCHEN. This is the first time Jackson’s work will be exhibited in Los Angeles.
Alison Jackson has photographed the Queen of England on the toilet, George Bush and Tony Blair chatting in the sauna, Paris Hilton bribing her fellow inmates and Monica Lewinsky lighting Bill Clinton’s cigar. Or has she? The likenesses are uncanny, but of course, her subjects are look-alikes. Her photos demonstrate that while seeing is believing, the truth is another story entirely. In her work, Jackson says, “Likeness becomes real and fantasy touches on the believable. The viewer is suspended in disbelief. I try to highlight the psychological relationship between what we see and what we imagine. This is bound up in our need to look—our voyeurism—and our need to believe.” Indeed, by showing “celebrities” ostensibly caught unawares, Jackson’s pictures show us what we imagine might go on behind closed doors. Her work has caused controversy, not least because it treads in a very gray area between parody and realism by seeming to break down the carefully fortified private lives of public figures.
Alison Jackson has won numerous awards for her work in the mass communication media of films, advertising, television, and books—as well as galleries. Creator of the best selling book Private, and director of the infamous TV series DoubleTake, as well as films and programs on Tony Blair, the Royal Family and the private lives of footballers, Jackson is a force to be reckoned with. Jackson studied sculpture and photography at London’s Royal College of Art and has exhibited in leading contemporary art galleries and museums throughout Europe and North America. This is Jackson’s first exhibition in Los Angeles.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Powerful images dominate the world. Pictures of celebrities who have reached the status of icons or demons. They are news—whether they are the Royal Family, Madonna, Posh and Becks or Britney Spears. This news becomes intrigue; it becomes difficult to differentiate between what is real and what is fantasy, what is important and what is not.
These celebrities are the icons of this contemporary folk religion. The pictures we have of them correspond to the religious pictures of the past. We find ourselves believing that what these pictures portray, really is the whole “truth” about the subject. For example, Marilyn Monroe is just a sex goddess; Britney Spears is white trash; Camilla is usually portrayed with a touch of the wicked old witch and so on.
The question is: How limited a picture do we receive of these icons? We suspect there is much more than we are told or read about. So our imaginations get to work to compensate for our lack of real information. Thus we are continually being seduced away from the “truth” into a world which has no “real” grounds of integrity and authenticity. At best, a photograph of a celebrity reproduces something authentic only at the very moment the shutter clicks. We have been teased and seduced into giving tiny fragments of “reality” an absolute authenticity. Images are by nature titillating and “of fantasy,” aiding this process. The photograph has become more real than the real.
This work is about simulation. Creating a clone or a copy of the “real” on paper. It is not a fake, it takes the place of the “real” for a moment, whilst looking at the image. The aim is to create likenesses of icons, where in the image, the simulations of icons, threatens the difference between “true” and “false,” between “real” and “imaginary”. The “real” subject becomes not necessary. The photographic image or the icon is more important and more seductive. It doesn’t matter to the viewer if the portrayal is not the “real”—as long as it looks like him or her—it creates a temporary confusion. This is the confusion the work searches to create. We think we are looking at something real, but we’re not. They are false images of look-alikes of the real thing.
Nevertheless, the photograph is authentic in one sense, Jane Smith and Jo Bloggs really exist as look-alikes within the image, but they portray a false picture of perception. The photographs reflect what really exists in the public imagination. They highlight the difference between what we see and what we imagine. This is bound up in our inherent greedy voyeurism and our need to believe.
