Alison Jackson

Alison Jackson

Alison Jackson, Haifa Museum of Art, March 2017
Born Alison Mowbray-Jackson
15 May 1970 (1970-05-15) (age 47)
Southsea, Hampshire, England
Education Chelsea College of Art and Design
Royal College of Art
Occupation Artist, photographer
Website AlisonJackson.com

Alison Jackson (born Alison Mowbray-Jackson, 15 May 1960) is a British BAFTA and multi award-winning artist [1] who explores the cult of celebrity culture as created by the media and publicity industries. Jackson makes works about celebrities doing things in private using lookalikes. 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 an incisive, funny and thought-provoking commentator on the burgeoning phenomenon of contemporary celebrity culture. Jackson works across all media and arts platforms in television, digital, books, and is widely exhibited in galleries and museums attracting extensive interest in the press and on TV. Jackson has won a BAFTA for her BBC 2 series Doubletake and collected awards from 'Infinity', the Photographers Gallery, 'The Best of the Best' and 'Creative Circle' over the years. She has also published four collections of her photographic work.

Biography

March 2017: Alison Jackson signing her book after lecturing at the Haifa Museum of Art

Jackson graduated with BA (Hons) in Fine Art Sculpture from the Chelsea College of Art and Design as an adult student. Here she established herself as an abstract painter, completing a small number of critically acclaimed works. Soon after, in 1997, her graduation piece, Crucifix, was the first exhibit at a gallery. It was priced at £1,500 and five years later it was valued at ten times that amount.[2] Jackson went on to gain her MA in Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art, London.

She became notorious in England in 1999 for producing black-and-white photographs including images that apparently showed Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed with a mixed-race love child. The photographs were part of her graduation series entitled Mental Images. She has gone on to produce similarly obscured photographs and films of celebrities using lookalikes in surprising or thought-provoking situations, portraying them, as she has described it, 'depicting our suspicions'.[3]

With reference to Jackson's image of Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed, Jackson says: "I started making work about Diana as a national icon at the time of her death. Millions mourned her through her image. Most of them did not know her in person; they only "knew" her through the media stories, images of her and TV. I thought I would make images of her, using a lookalike, to explore our perception of her and our fantasies about her love life."

Jackson was the artist behind BBC Two's series Doubletake, for which she won a BAFTA.[4] She went on to make mockumentaries for Channel 4 which included the depiction of George W. Bush and Tony Blair lookalikes in a series of 'behind the facade' scenes. Jackson also produced a film devoted to Tony Blair which coincided with his exit from office entitled Blaired Vision, shown on Channel 4 on 26 June 2007. Alongside these commissions from Channel 4, she made two other films, Tony Blair: Rock Star and Sven: The coach, the Cash and His Lovers.[5] On 1 April 2011 the artist launched an online celebrity news site in conjunction with the launch of her third book 'Up The Aisle', 300 images of her take on the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Her numerous replicas of the couple in various positions and settings went on display at London's Ben Brown Gallery. Alison is also developing a new series for American television.[3]

In October 2012, alongside Art Below, Jackson presented her work at the exhibition 'Art Below Regents Park' in Regent's Park Tube station to coincide with Frieze Art Fair, one of the most important international contemporary art fairs that takes place each October in London.

In November 2016, she did a protest rally featuring a Donald Trump lookalike and involving hundreds of women bearing placards "Don't snatch my pussy", "I am not a slut" and "Not my President" in front of Trump Tower, Manhattan, New York.[6]

She is an Ambassador for the Spinal Injuries Association (UK).

TV work

Jackson photo: Trump taking a selfie with beauty queens; all are lookalikes
Jackson photographing the Royal Family, posed by lookalikes
Bush Rubix Cube - work of Alison Jackson with look alike
Hair blow, with Trumplook alike - work of Alison Jackson


Films

Art exhibitions

Books

Opera

References

  1. ↑ Ferrier, Morwenna (23 January 2011). "Alison Jackson: "I’d love to do Piers Morgan. I’d just use Susan Boyle. They’re identical"". The Guardian Review. London. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
  2. ↑ Groves, Nancy. Jackson spent a couple of years developing her abstract painterly style and had a number of underground exhibitions. "The science of art", Newsquest, 13 April 2007. Retrieved 24 December 2008.
  3. 1 2 Garfield, Simon (7 June 2007). "The real Tony uncovered". The Observer Review. London. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
  4. ↑ "That's Blair and Becks! No wait...". BBC News Online Magazine. 18 December 2003. Retrieved 1 January 2010.
  5. ↑ "Photographer Alison Jackson gives up hope of finding Gordon Brown look-alike". The Telegraph. 25 October 2008. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  6. ↑ Bryant, Miranda (25 October 2016). "Donald Trump takes Times Square by storm with topless and bikini-clad babes". The Mail Online Review. London. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
  7. ↑ "La Trashiata": A Story in the Public Domain, BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals 2015
  8. ↑ Crick, Michael (22 August 2014). ""La Trashiata": satirising celebrity culture the Alison Jackson way". channel4.com/news. Channel 4. Retrieved 1 December 2015. ... a brilliant satire of modern celebrity culture. The Queen, Princes William and Harry; Kate and Pippa Middleton; Putin, Gordon Ramsay, David Beckham, Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi; Madonna and Lady Gaga, among others, all feature in a string of 14 famous, but rewritten, operatic arias."
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