JANE SKEER

To Alter

to lift

to tuck

to pout

to extend

to exaggerate

to enlarge

to smooth

to puff

to enhance

to raise

to extenuate

to beautify

to improve

to lustre

to transform

to change

to disfigure

to fix

to modify

to push

to pull

to adjust

to glamorise

to adorn

to decorate

to dress up

to make-up

to garnish

to smarten

to ornament

to gussy up

to improve

to adjust

to make different

to amend

to remodel

to rework

to tweak

to refine

to highlight

to define

to characterize

to magnify

to colour

to preserve

to doll up

to disturb

to disobey

to refreshen

to unsettle

to trouble

to worry

to upset

to fluster

to ruffle

to frighten

to excite

to put off

to alarm

to bother

to concern

to annoy

to distress

to derail

to arouse

to distract

to destroy.

 Brave Sook 

(Notes from a brief interview with artist Jane Skeer) 

Jane and I are sitting across from one another in the cafe of Glasgow School of Art’s Stow Building. It is Monday, June 9th, 2025. Jane’s show at Saltspace Gallery opens in five days. She has asked me to write something about the show. 

Pairs of images line the walls - self-portraits of Jane. Perhaps they speak to an identity in flux, a person between states, a body, more specifically, a face, shifting between perception and reality, the internal and the external, the performative and the authentic... If it is at all possible to draw these distinctions… I wonder if these concepts are not inextricable… do they not chaotically overlap, swallow themselves and rebirth themselves within minutes of their conception? After all, Jane and I agree that to be a woman is to perform. 

Jane tells me she has two sons and two daughters, and I think again about the pairs of photos in the room. Pairs that could suggest a relationship of opposition, a binary, one is one and one is the other, one photo is “plain jane” and the other is Jane-othered/ altered/ enhanced… 

We talk about the currency of youth and being an object of desire 

We talk about self-optimising for consumption rather than expression 

We talk about whether or not it is a political act to refuse to intervene/ alter one's body during its ageing process 

We discuss the political act of deciding not to participate 

We talk about whether or not decisive inaction, actualised through a lens of resisting the standards of beauty-industry-prescribed aesthetics, can ever be a radical act… 

We discuss whether a decision to age without intervention is a feminist act 

Jane tells me that the title FERAL refers to a perception rather than a reality of her way of life: 

“I’m perceived as feral back home. I have people rooting for me to fail so they can express their “I told you so’s” about that horrible woman who left her kids and husband at home alone while she went off to pursue an education… after all, what right do I have? If it were the other way around, and it was him going off to pursue a dream, it wouldn’t be questioned, but I do it, and I'm a monster, I’m feral, and I’m out of control” 

Me: “Your kids have already left home? They are adults, are they not?” 

Jane: “I'll always be responsible, I’ll always need to be there, or so people say. I should be there waiting to die, I shouldn't be here, I shouldn’t be doing this to dad” 

Jane tells me she will become a grandmother sometime in the next week. 

I tell Jane about Ayesha Erotica’s album called slut, and the reclaimation of glamour and sex in her performance work, that has the explict intention to be repellant to misogynistic men… 

Amongst other references, Jane mentions Helen Chadwick, Etel Adnan, Cindy Sherman, Douglas Gordon, Lauren Elkin, Glasgow Women’s Library, Barbara Kruger and Dr Suess during our conversation. 

Our chat is potent and brief, as our conversations always are. I tell Jane I’ll have her text ready and somehow try to capture her expansive thoughts in 300 words. Something I know will be impossible. 

Before we part ways, Jane teaches me a new word. 

Jane: “The show is about me wondering, in a landscape of modification, enhancement and alteration, where do I belong… I'm such a sook, I just want what's inside to count and for that to be what people value” 

“SOOK” - sook (plural sooks) (Australia, Atlantic Canada, New Zealand, slang, derogatory) A crybaby, a complainer, a whinger; a shy person, a wimp; a coward. 

I consider what it would be like to live with a sense that people on the other side of the world are waiting, with bated breath, for you to fail… so that they can feel reassured in their own decisions to avoid taking the risk of earnest self-expression, the risk of navigating this world as a brave sook, as Jane does. 

Katie Grenville 

13/05/2025