You can watch a little bit of war from your nice living room - 30 seconds of what's going on in Syria - and when you've had enough, switch over to some celebrity programme. We live our life through screens and images in this way, and we don't know what is real or fake anymore. It doesn't matter.

Alison Jackson

Categorized in : War Real Nice

You can't rely on your own perception when it comes to anything. You can always be proved wrong.

Alison Jackson

rely perception

I am fascinated by the Royal Family because they are shrouded in mystique, and the Queen, and to a certain extent William, represent fabulous blank canvases. I find the Prince of Wales less fascinating because he spills the beans and we know too much about him.

Alison Jackson

fabulous too-much queens

I'm particularly interested in how you can't rely on your own perception.

Alison Jackson

rely perception

Celebrities do look different in real life from our images of them - there is a big gap. And that is what my work is about: the gap between the image and the celebrity themselves.

Alison Jackson

different real looks

A lot of people who look at my photographs think it is an easy joke, but it does take a bit of thinking about.

Alison Jackson

doe people thinking

I'm not satirical in a traditional way. What I do is more about creating caricatures and cartoons. I am commentating on the nature of how we live through photography, and how you can twist an angle to create a different perception of a person.

Alison Jackson

creating perception photography

Photography can be a deceitful, superficial medium that leads us into believing something even though we know it's not necessarily true. It lulls us into a false sense of complacency.

Alison Jackson

complacency photography believe

Among other things, I use a Samsung mobile phone, a very bad quality video camera, and an old Olympus with extremely bad Sigma lenses.

Alison Jackson

camera phone bad quality

Of course, my own political beliefs inform the ideas I come up with.

Alison Jackson

own my-own political ideas

The only people I really hate are parking attendants.

Alison Jackson

only parking hate people

I am very pro-royal. Britain without them would be a sadder place.

Alison Jackson

them without i-am place

Art work is inconclusive. It opens your mind up. At least, that's what I hope it does. And advertising, using exactly the same photograph, closes things down. It makes it conclusive. It sells a product, and that is its primary function.

Alison Jackson

hope mind work art

When Princess Diana died, I couldn't understand why people were mourning her death in such an enormous, hysterical way when they didn't actually know her for real.

Alison Jackson

understand death people way

Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.

Alison Jackson

picture truth believe thinking

I think privacy is important, and it's important you don't bore people with your own boring self.

Alison Jackson

think you self people

I'm a contemporary artist and I show in art galleries and museums. I show a number of photographs and films, but I also make television programs, books and some appetizing, all with the same concept.

Alison Jackson

some artist television art

I had a very outdoorsy childhood. I was athletic and used to ride and do dressage. I could ride almost before I could walk. There is a picture of me at 18 months old sitting happily on the back of a donkey.

Alison Jackson

walk ride me childhood

I can't remember exactly how old I was when my parents gave me my first camera, but it was a Canon, and I was certainly far too young to have such a good camera.

Alison Jackson

parents good me remember

I think my parents had in mind that I would settle down at quite a young age, but I decided that being a housewife in a big country house wasn't for me.

Alison Jackson

parents me age mind

I think my parents had in mind that I would settle down at quite a young age, but I decided that being a housewife in a big country house wasn't for me. I wanted to leave the country, head for London and see what the world had to offer.

Alison Jackson

parents me age mind