Manchester, 1970. Lives and works in London.

Dawn Mellor’s paintings are too beautifully rendered, and their helter-skelter content too intriguingly strange, for us not to look. We find ourselves transfixed by a zombie version of Dorothy, a drowning Hillary Clinton, an eyeless Michael Jackson, like exhibits from a ramshackle circus sideshow. The psychological warfare Mellor inflicts on these idols — and by extension, on the viewer who reveres them — transforms our fascination with their celebrity through the guilty pleasure of our disgust.

(Gallery statement)