Now and then, one reads an anecdote about a particular celebrity that elucidates the alienating, dissociative nature of fame so perfectly that even if it’s printed as the truth, it is still tempting to call it “apocryphal.”

One such story comes from Truman Capote, who once told the New York Post that he’d found Marilyn Monroe in the bathroom of a restaurant, staring fixedly at her own reflection. Asked what she was doing, she replied simply: “Looking at her.”

Three short words, and we have everything we need, every idea of what it might have been like to be Marilyn Monroe — or rather, what it might have felt like to be Norma Jean, and to find Marilyn Monroe staring back at you from over the sink.

– extract from exhibition text by Philippa Snow

New paintings, works on paper & photographic prints by Eve Ackroyd & Penny Slinger.