Primarily my artwork is self-portraiture, but not in the traditional sense. In the work I create a photographic copy of myself and place it in the real world instead of me.

She becomes a substitute and my visual representative. My work forms an enquiry into the act of looking and being looked at. Referring to psychoanalysis, phenomenology and feminism I examine my own experience of becoming an object of and also consider the experience the viewer has when looking at me as a female and a photographic object.

By producing artwork that establishes me as an object, I imply the idea of the idealised male spectator. It could be argued that I produce artwork that reinforces stereotypical images of the female body; as she is passively laid out for the camera while the active male embraces her (Substitutes 2007 and Beneath the Surface 2007/08). But by depicting my body as an image I am able to suggest my presence while confirming my absence. It is the man who is being deceived. He seems satisfied by the sexual encounter, with a reciprocating being who can’t reciprocate, because she is no more than a representation.

Their relationship symbolises an inadequacy of human interaction and the fictitious nature of idealisation. The pathos of the scene does not originate in gender inequality but from the man’s willingness to be deceived. There is a suspension of disbelief taking place in the seemingly gratifying embrace of the male; and the viewing public colludes in it, they also want to see image and body simultaneously. This wilful delusion is inherent to the medium – the desire to look at a 2-dimensional photograph and believe in the integrity of the 3-dimensional objects that are suggested by the surface.

In the Installations series (2007/08) I play on the allusion of 3-dimensions and the confused reality created by my photographic representations. I install cut-outs into public environments so their presence is unexpected and they often look convincing in the first encounter. But a second glance reveals the exposed underside of the image and incompleteness of the scene, confirming that the figures are flat images rather than human beings.

In my current work (Interloper 2008) I have continued to play on this illusion of reality, using photography and video to create convincing scenes in which my cut-out becomes a credible substitute for me. This work does not recount the relationship between a man and a woman but places the viewer in direct interaction with the cut-out. The overtly sexual nature of the body compels the viewer into the position of voyeur, only to reveal itself as an inanimate object.

There is a strong performative aspect throughout my work and it is often difficult to determine whether the artworks I exhibit are pieces of work in their own right, or documents of performances that have already taken place. This ambiguousness allows me to play with the conventions of performance and photography while examining the role of the spectator within the structure of looking.