Curatorial Statement | Artist's Résumé

Todd's photographic works are possessed by a 'creepy airlessness', as curator William McAloon puts it. Her art draws on the traditions of commercial and studio photography, but powerfully subverts them both; the sitters in her photographs stare out at you blankly, emitting a strong sense of ennui, boredom so pervasive that their eyes have already glazed over. You can spot a Todd photograph by its eerie presence: there is something wrong, something uneasy about these works, but it is not explicitly articulated. As viewers we are left to put the pieces together and make of it what we will.

Recently, Todd has been injecting her work with malaise and ill health. In Telecom Prospect 2004 she exhibits photographs exploring toxicity and chemical overload. Methylated spirits weep from the ground, creating attractive pools of liquid. A woman stands in all her synthetic glory, a petrol can at her feet. Todd manages to make her photographs both alluring and physically repugnant. Writer Anna Miles has commented that Todd 'cultivates a visual equivalent to the incomprehension we sometimes feel at the strange behaviour of others, or more chillingly, ourselves.'

Sarah Farrar