The Narcissist
Jade Venus

This is me. Because I’m telling you so. It might not be clear, but I’m actually taking the photo.
The facial expression is put on for the picture.
It’s pretend. So maybe it is not me at all.

Spending countless hours alone plumbing the depths of my memory to find inspiration for art
has created an unexpected condition. One would assume these durations of introspection would help produce for myself some great realisation
of a hidden self truth (alas I am still searching). Instead I am presented with an unsettling mix of fact and fiction. The narrative of my life is in multiple paths; it is conflicting, fluid and transient.

‘The stories we tell about reality construe the real,rather than merely reflect it’

I like this quote because it quite neatly sums up
my art practice. Autobiography is realised upon
its completion. The artworks made for this show have now altered the experiences they may (or may not) have been based on. When I try to retrieve a hazy memory in the backlog of my
mind and make some art to show what I think or feel or want or wish or lots of other things, the memory is then slightly altered. It is now remembered through the experience of making
art (and of course the representation that is
created with the art as well… and then what I think of the actual artwork too, I guess). Like layers of clear film, slightly altering the visibility
of an object with each new addition, the veracity of memories and experience are just as easily tampered with. The authenticity in my autobiography is ambiguous. The level of performance, uncertain. The image I create of myself is too raw and honest to ignore, yet seemingly too constructed to believe.

This exhibition, for me, is a combination of contradictions. What is truth and what is
imagined. What is origin and what is reflection. What is me and what is you.

(This entire exhibition is about me and yet you don’t know me at all.)