Dress Codes

From 2010 to 2017 I gradually amassed a body of work that would eventually become the touring show ‘Dress Codes’. In this collection of portraits I examined the construct of gender presentation. Although initially there was a balance of male and female models, eventually I edited the show to examine female constructs only. The only two male models represented were the model for ‘Boy’ and Girl’, showing the male and female aspects of his/her presentation, and ‘The Changeling’, a transgendered person just prior to her surgical and chemical transition to female. These were very collaborative works, with the models choosing how they wished to be represented. This exhibition was a very natural development in my work, as so many of my paintings are concerned with feminist issues, and with redefining the construct of the feminine in contemporary life.