Jennifer Yorke Statement

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In my work I examine the tension between public space and private identity. Through manipulations of familiar images, I suggest that our public and private selves are not easily reconciled. In my recent collages, I conflate fashion’s celebration and distortion of the body with our more day-to-day experience of its flaws, failures and expellants.

Curling blonde hair is an icon of feminine allure and a symbol of conformity. I surround the viewer with enlarged blonde hair in Bombshell, a large installation of inkjet prints on translucent silk. Bombshell both seduces and suffocates, much like the idealized femininity it depicts.

A pearl forms around a tiny irritant trapped within an oyster’s shell. In order to isolate the irritant, the oyster coats it with many layers of nacre. We create explanations for irritatingly incongruous events in a similar way. A String of Pearls is a group of large, four-color screen prints rendered with a very large halftone dot. From afar, the pearls appear smooth and luminous, but break down into dots when approached. The object of our desire is always just out of reach.

My work is about our often-unsuccessful attempts to know and understand the world through appearances, which offer us both more and less than we expect. The moments of uncertainty that my work at once represents and creates are moments of possibility, in which we are forced to give up our preconceptions about each other.