The Real Thing
Ballarat International Foto Biennale
Core Program 2023

43 Lydiard Street North, Ballarat, Australia
Exhibition Dates: 26 August - 22 October 2023

What is ‘the real thing’ when a person spends their life masking their neurobiological difference? As a neurodiverse artist, I have developed strategies to hide my dyslexia and to create a professional life as an artist, designer and university lecturer. These masking strategies are complex, habitual and deeply ingrained. As an interdisciplinary artist, I use my practice to uphold and validate these masks and divert attention away from my deficits. Photography has long been a process dear to my heart as it reflects an accurate representation of my internal musings through images of place, people and abstraction. Through self-portraits, I aim to delve into my habitual strategies to reveal the layers of masks and ask what is ‘the real thing’ in the face of unconscious deception. As a mechanism for capturing the ghostly traces of a presence, I use photography to arrest the essence of my real self.