Artwork Information

Created over the last two years during various covid-19 lockdowns, Look Mum – They Killed Her!, 2022 sees a return to form for Fahey, who again enters the frame to confront her own image and identity while shining light on wider political issues. The painting is a diptych of sorts, with Fahey’s haunting self-image taking up the centre of the composition shown in the act of painting with gloves and a glamorous pair of earrings. The scene then jumps to reveal her palette and tubes of paint on the right. All around is the material of everyday life. Early in her career, Fahey was labelled a ‘domestic painter’, but as she reminds people, ‘domestic painters in the past had tidied up their houses first or, I assumed, their wives had’. Nobody has tidied up and the interior jangles: shopping bags hang beside aprons, which float above the kitchen stereo, which rests beneath a collection of Asian masks. Fahey wants to show what she calls the ‘socialism of things’.