Artist Gemma Land’s work references the surreal and the uncanny. With influences such as Dali and Lynch, her photographs of North London suburbia and moribund twins feature an unsettling symmetry.

For Land it’s all about contradictions. “The identical twins wearing the same outfits question our perception of the real,” she says. “They appear the same and yet are different at the same time.”

It’s an oxymoron that fascinates her and in her series of images of suburban semi-detached houses, Bourgeois Utopias, she shows how homes that started out as identical structures over time become individualised by their owners.

And like Dali before her, who merged fashion and art with his designs for Schiaperelli, earlier this year Land launched a collection of scarves of her surreal photographs for A/W 10 London Fashion Week. She is now planning a new range inspired by Gothic writer and Art collector Horace WalpoIe. In Land’s words: “It’s art disguised as fashion.”

In the meantime though, her fascination with all things twin continues and she is currently on the hunt for more identical siblings. It’s a subject we too find fascinating.

‘The Twins: Once and Again’ is at the Silent Room gallery until the 9th September.

www.silentroomgallery.com
www.gemmaland.com

Words by Boudicca Fox-Leonard

Tags: Fashion, Gemma Land