Best Self Dismantles the Perfect Image

We’re used to thinking of our ‘best self’ as something aspirational. Filtered, focused, ever-improving. But what if the best version of ourselves isn’t one we’d recognise, or even like? Best Self, a small - but keenly observed - exhibition at the Brooke Benington gallery (running for two weeks only), plays with that tension.

Curated by artist Polly Morgan with a sharp, satirical edge, Best Self examines how image, identity, and womanhood are shaped by everything from AI to anti-ageing serums. Across sculpture, painting, computer-generated images and installations, the exhibition holds up a mirror to the endless versions of ourselves we perform, retouch, and archive; and asks what’s left behind when the facade cracks?  

Julia Thompson’s glowing pastel bottles, made from makeup, soap, sugar, perfume and vodka, mimic the sleek aesthetics of skincare marketing, but don’t hold their form. They leak, stoop, and split at the seams. A quiet undoing of the ‘ideal’ they once promised. In Boo Saville’s Emerge (Quarantine), a woman’s face appears post-lockdown, peeled and primed behind a cleansing mask. It asks whether self-care can ever really be separated from social performance. Self-care or self-erasure?

Christopher Page’s painting That Which Is Missing renders a mirror so precisely that it tricks the viewer, only to vanish on approach. It’s a quiet reminder that reflection, whether painted or pixelated, isn’t always truthful. Like a smartphone screen, it shows us what we want to see. But draw closer and the illusion disappears.   

Elsewhere, history gets a digital retelling. Mat Collishaw’s Mask of Youth recreates Queen Elizabeth I’s true (if imagined) face in robotic silicone, stripped of the powdered image she famously left behind. Bengt Tibert’s AI-generated women, clad in neon gymwear and posed in surreal natural landscapes, are equal parts heroic and hyper real avatars of a hyper-curated world that feels both absurd and familiar. 

The exhibition balances social commentary with visual intrigue. Polly Morgan’s concrete iPhone box castings sit like headstones in a digital graveyard, while Juno Calypso’s Silent Retreat captures a woman mid-spa treatment, reflected and fragmented across five mirrors, revealing nothing at all.

In a time when our image is constantly curated - smoothed, filtered, and uploaded - Best Self doesn’t argue against beauty or technology, but it does ask: who are we performing for? And what happens when the image outlasts the person? And that, right now, feels like a conversation worth having.

On at Brooke Benington gallery at 76 Cleveland Street, London, W1T 6NB until 28th June, 2025