Liz Rideal - Self-portrait

Liz Rideal self-portrait aged 47. C-type mounted onto museum board. 2001 The original image of the artist in profile under water and holding her nose has been printed and then reversed four times, the four versions of it then combined to make a larger pattern. It becomes difficult to distinguish the artists features as lines join up across the four segments to create an almost kaleidoscopic illusion. The artist says of this work:
"I made this underwater self-portrait in the azure seas of Trellis Bay in the British Virgin Islands. The idea was to use an enclosed environment under the surface of the water using the automatic fixed focus of a simple hand held camera within a waterproof casing. The element of chance was important, and of not being able to look through the viewfinder, but rather to view myself as any fish would in those circumstances.
Pairs of photographs are printed as mirror images and then collaged together making up a picture that reads initially as a skull and therefore exists as a memento mori. The notion of eternity and suggestion of death affirm the fact of the self-portrait being a permanent record of a moment in time, in my case aged forty seven.’

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