The exhibition finds works which reverberate between domestic and stage-like scenes captured in several works, with larger scale works blur the two spheres of influence. The adjoining close cropped portraits add to these thematic elements: providing character profiles obscured; from naturalistic, unspecified backdrops entwined with masks (‘In Character’, ‘Untamed’), and then inverted in other pieces as everyday accessories are worn in front of clearly dramatic curtains (‘Obtuse Glimmer’).

In all paintings on display, a clear sense of lingering/hovering/ascending/suspension is held in tension with the gravity of emotion. A bird captured in a small piece (‘Pensive’) on board seems like an intimate relief, supplementary work while another piece explores the ‘outsider’ artist struggle (‘Every Angle’), hinting at being tormented by the exploration of the self. The lightness is found in motifs such as feathers/moths/dresses/water droplets or reaching arm gestures and props positioned above figures in compositions (‘Reach for the stars’, ‘Silver Hooks’) which are animated against the confines of bell jars/specimen pins/ training shoes/ shrouding curtains. This heaviness is further contrasted with levity as the whimsicality of girlhood and ballet. While the large works offer figures who linger/ruminate/inertia (‘A Lake Encircled by Porcelain’, ‘Infinite Lounging’) a most recent piece presents a figure in a more ecstatic gesture, albeit unnaturally, unnervingly performative and almost contradicting the other details of the scene. Mirrors are everywhere: splitting up compositions, reflecting and refracting gazes, multiplying space: the mirror which a female observes her unclothed body, the mirror manipulated at an angle to capture a strange reflection of animal fur, and finally the dual image of the mannequin reflected in a glossy wood floor. There is not a clear-cut dualism, rather through the multiplication of space, identities, and motifs, an exploration is wholly ambivalent to the fixed, singular self.