A dazzling gown worn by Whitney Houston, a couture dress that belonged to Liza Minnelli, and other curious creations feature in this exhibition alongside a selection of Todd’s early works. 

Yvonne Todd is renowned for her unsettling portraits of women.

Working in the mode of a stylist, Todd uses the language of dress, including wigs, accessories, make-up and carefully selected vintage garments, to realise the physical and interior lives of her sitters: an unsettling, idiosyncratic and at times bizarre cast of cultists, Christians, and sad-eyed socialites.

In particular, Todd is interested in the construction of femininity and the tensions between appearances and reality – that moment of ‘latent hysteria’ when ‘someone is unravelling at the seams but it’s contained’.

In Todd’s world, as in life, clothing plays a key role in that containment.