Non-Sterile, A Solo Exhibition by Linda Toigo

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St John on Bethnal Green is very pleased to welcome Linda Toigo and her unique view on beauty and the world of glamour magazines to kick off our 2014 season of exhibitions in the Belfry. Armed with a non-sterile scalpel blade, she carves through the sterile glossy perfection represented in magazines to reveal the fast-paced ephemeral nature of beauty imagery. Meticulously excavating ubiquitous layers, she singles out individual images suspended in time to reveal a pattern that simulates a complex interplay of light and darkness. The multitude of a magazine's smiling lips, bright eyes and translucent limbs is exposed in ‘Vanity Fear', an unsettling series of portraits that hang in the solemn space. Alongside this, ‘Paper Dolls' deploys an army of unattainable sleek feminine flawlessness that, rising from carved pages of Vogue's, cast dark shadows on the surroundings. Combined, her works cut away at the ideal images of beauty and reveal a juxtaposition between the overexposure of perfection with the ritualistic dissection of the glossy image.