For the past two decades Alex McQuilkin has explored dichotomous oppositions in the ways images and stories interact in media and society. In these works the cinematic competes against the authentic and human longing fights implied critique. The idea of mediated appearance, how we view ourselves and others, how we want to be viewed, what we are taught to understand and be attracted towards is tackled and reflected back towards the audience. Along the way, McQuilkin presses into notions of gender, class and race in alternatingly subtle and aggressive ways. Taken together the works on view prophetically intervene in a variety of the narcissistic definitions of our Western condition in the early 21st century. Her exploration of mediated imageries is an exploration of a standard universal - image obsession, projection of self and a societal consensus of what appearances and actions are forced to be.