Erica Eyres at Centre for Contemporary Arts

5 August -16 October

Erica is interested in how humans create an absurd mixture of conflicting emotions when they are faced with overwhelming situations and anxiety. Her latest work, is a series of drawings and videos focusing on women and how they portray themselves through self-portraits, how these images reflect their sexuality and their sense of self-worth. These women straddle the border between being pitiful and hilarious so that they demand both empathy and an uncomfortable laughter. 

Her recent series of drawings uses men’s magazines as a starting point, inspired by photo spreads such as “Real Girls to Phone and Date”. Women are encouraged to submit photos of themselves and to describe their ideal man, or to describe why they’ll “do anything”. The low production quality of these images (some taken with mobile phone cameras) adds to the aesthetic of the self-portraits, revealing the women’s insecurities and clumsiness. In the drawings, the original context is removed, depicting young women who pose awkwardly in their underwear, displaying deformities that could be either major or minor (depending on how we choose to see them).

Despite their awkwardness these women stare back at the viewer with a kind of ease, rather than a resignation. They appear eager or expectant, implying that they are waiting for a reaction and approval.

Erica’s videos feature characters that are both hilarious and pitiful, evoking a cautious laughter. Always portraying the characters she creates Erica adds to the sense uneasiness, making use of the blurred line between the fiction and the objectiveness of self-portraiture.

Erica draws inspiration from the narrative structures found in television, and emulates video dating programs, reality television, confessional television, documentaries, and children’s programs.

By imitating these familiar structures, Erica draws the viewer in and then suddenly upsets their expectations, intending to induce the sense of embarrassment and confusion that we experience when we are confronted with fear, sympathy and laughter that somehow feels inappropriate.

“I believe that laughter is a natural reaction to fear, but simultaneously makes us feel guilty when it appears out of place."