"I drew on ‘The Lady of Shallot’ by John William Waterhouse and made ‘The Last Gaze’. But the Lady of Shallot didn’t see the world. She saw it through a mirror. And I thought actually that’s the way a lot of us see things. Slightly at an oblique angle we don’t quite get to the reality of it. And the painting has this: when the web is blown apart then he’s got the threads winding around her skirt, imprisoning her. And I thought: ‘I’m going to use that and I did a double image of it in reverse. One side is black and white and the other is colour. As I was working through this, Payne Shurvell were suggesting I did a show with them. And I thought I should actually pick up on these themes, on the idea of the mirror image. I’ve inserted the Lady of Shallot in the image of Betty Page at Payne Shurvell: Betty Page in the classic pose. I thought: ‘this is about the dilemmas of having a kind of sexuality that actually you’re quite pleased with, but also where there are traps’. I put the Lady of Shallot on Betty Page’s back. And then I put other things around."
[above text from FAD Magazine, Margaret Harrison interview, 2013]
The Last Gaze is based on one of three paintings (circa 1894) by John William Waterhouse, which reference Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott, 1843. This Arthurian tale tells of a woman, confined to a secluded tower, who can view the world only through mirrors. On setting eyes on Sir Lancelot she breaks this rule and incurs a curse that leads to her death.