Alison Jackson
Alison Jackson
Alison Jacksonis a British BAFTA and multi award-winning artist who explores the cult of celebrity culture - an extraordinary phenomenon created by the media and publicity industries. Jackson makes convincingly realistic work about celebrities doing things in private using lookalikes. She creates scenarios we have all imagined but never seen before. Jackson comments on the public's voyeurism, the power and seductive nature of imagery, and on their need to believe. The artist's work has established wide respect for her as...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth15 May 1960
I think my parents had in mind that I would settle down at quite a young age, but I decided that being a housewife in a big country house wasn't for me. I wanted to leave the country, head for London and see what the world had to offer.
When I am preparing my 'lookalike' photographs, I think about the character of the real people, because, if the photographs are going to be plausible, you have to convince the viewer that they could have happened.
There is a wall of myth around royals and A-list celebrities, and that makes us wonder what they are really like. We see them on magazine covers so often that we think we know them intimately, and we want to learn more. I like to burst that bubble a little.
It's always difficult to see yourself as other people do, but I'm realistic about my appearance. I wasn't born with one of those pretty, pretty faces, so I've never been absorbed with the way I look. I just try to make the most of what I've got.
I'm really interested in how we view the public figure, what makes a public figure, what makes a celebrity, and how images make politicians, so I take an interest in politics, but it's really an interest in the image.
I'm a contemporary artist and I show in art galleries and museums. I show a number of photographs and films, but I also make television programs, books and some appetizing, all with the same concept.
I suppose we carry photographs now, but I think it's rather wonderful that people used to carry drawings and watercolours. I wish people did that more often.
I go up to people and ask if I can use them in my photos. Occasionally it is the person in question, as happened with James Hewitt. How embarrassing. He just laughed and said, 'You can't afford me.'
Finding the perfect lookalike to work with is crucial and a lengthy process. We have our regulars, but we also use social media all the time to find people. It's amazing who you can unearth on Twitter.
Photography can be a deceitful, superficial medium that leads us into believing something even though we know it's not necessarily true. It lulls us into a false sense of complacency.
I'm not satirical in a traditional way. What I do is more about creating caricatures and cartoons. I am commentating on the nature of how we live through photography, and how you can twist an angle to create a different perception of a person.
A lot of people who look at my photographs think it is an easy joke, but it does take a bit of thinking about.
Celebrities do look different in real life from our images of them - there is a big gap. And that is what my work is about: the gap between the image and the celebrity themselves.
I'm particularly interested in how you can't rely on your own perception.