Dawn Mellor, Jackie Onassis. © the artist

Exhibition Preview - Dawn Mellor, Vile Affections At Spacex, Exeter, until May 3 2008.

From politicians and world leaders to film stars and hapless celebrities the portrait paintings of Dawn Mellor seem to be partly the result of a fan’s grim fascination with celebrity and partly an out-and-out critique of the media saturated times we live in.

For the past ten years, she has been painting transgressive portraits of celebrities, consciously misrepresenting, sexualising and violating imagery culled from photographic portraits, gossip magazines, film stills and the internet.

Dawn Mellor, Margaret Thatcher. © the artist

The result is an often ambiguous message that somehow seems to combine imaginative sadistic cruelty, satire and empathy.

You can decide for yourself with Vile Affections at Spacex, which comprises more than 60 of her works clustered together salon style in the main gallery space.

Subjects range from well known actors and entertainers such as Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, Nicole Kidman and Michael Jackson to politicians and world leaders including Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice.

Dawn Mellor, Morrissey. © the artist

Writers and academics also make an appearance with Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Giles Deleuze and Helene Cixous all suffering from Mellor’s caustic interpretation.

The literary connections extend to the inspiration behind the exhibition which is cited as being Dante’s Divine Comedy and Satre’s existential play, No Exit, which contained the now famous line, 'Hell is other people'.

A series of specially commissioned works have also been added for the Spacex show in the shape of a series of drawings of Britney Spears.

Dawn Mellor, Tony Blair. © the artist

A car crash of high art and horror kitsch, the exhibition is designed as an assault on the values that define and construct 'high society' and conventional notions of success, in the form of a portrait gallery. In the gallery Mellor has constructed, various ambassadors from the worlds of fashion, politics, music, film, art and literature suffer with varying degrees of dignity and respect.

Vile Affections has been organised by Studio Voltaire, London and will tour to Team Gallery, New York.

This is an exhibition preview. If you've been to see this show, why not let us know what you think?