Cindy Sherman is a film star. Actually, she’s loads of film stars. She’s a reclining blonde looking wistfully into the distance, a slight redhead in a robe, a blushing bride and a raven haired beauty. She’s also three country sisters and their mother, she’s a group of four near-identical stars. It’s seriously creepy.
For 35 years, Sherman has been the subject of her own work. She’s transformed herself into an endlessly rotating series of characters. She mocks, twists and undermines femininity and gender roles, and in this show of recent work, she’s become a bunch of fictional pre-war film stars.
Each character sits against a digital background, like they’re posing in a promo shot for a non-existent film. They have all the hallmarks you think old female film stars should have. Some are homely, gentle, safe and cutesy – geriatric Judy Garlands – but most have a menace to them. They look like old alcoholic stars, long past their prime, wishing their lives away on a divan, dreaming of their departed lovers. Their star quality has dimmed. Are these photoshoots goodbyes? You imagine a big bottle of piles and a glass of whisky waiting in the background. Tragic figures, nostalgic and vain.
By mocking those ideas, by dragging them out into the open by the hair, Sherman is giving a good two fingers up at the idea of all of that. Those boohoo classic tragedies are dismantled here, dismissed outright. It’s classic, humorous, creepy, angry Cindy Sherman.
