Paige Perkins

Mixed media installation

No way out - a padded cell, a place of claustrophobic confinement. This cell has another Occupant. An inspection window allows for shifting perceptions, where the visitor becomes subject as well as observer. An intimate space, where privacy is denied. No escape from the watchful gaze.

Evoking Velasquez's enigmatic Rokeby Venus, where the image in the mirror is unrecognisable, and whose gaze implicates the viewer as voyeur into an intimate boudoir. Questions of Self and Other emerge.

'The moon and mirrors have this much in common: you cannot see behind them. Moonlit and white, Wolf-Alice looked at herself in the mirror and wondered whether there she saw the beast who came to bite her in the night.' (from Wolf Alice, by Angela Carter)

The Presence within the cell engenders a raft of narrative possibilities, with echoes of fairy tales, myths, and unsettling stories of transformation.