Self-Portraiture is intensely subjective and in creating work together Shaughnessy and Shipton-Smith interrogate the tension between recognizing the subliminal process of their influence upon one another and their drive to visually represent the relationship between their inner and outer worlds as individuals.

The title of the exhibition, ‘Pellicola’, means little skin or film in Italian. Definitions of film and skin tend to discuss actual physical presence whereas Shaughnessy and Shipton-Smith deal with the emotional separation between interiority and exteriority.  Physically our skin separates what is on the inside to what is on the outside.  Through ‘Pellicola’ the artists begin to peel or scrape away their outer ‘skins’ to show the audience their inner identities.  By working together they push this concept to another level by stepping in to the world of the other.  Themes throughout the exhibition include the blurring of the boundaries of self and other, and the use of masquerade and doubling which serve to complicate the viewer’s gaze as to what is being revealed or concealed.