Holly Topping has come unstuck in time. She paints Holly Topping not quite as a self-portrait, but as the trophy she might have become, set frozen in time in a diorama as if suddenly beamed through space and time. The precocious adolescent promiscuously posing in tight satin practices her gaze while positioning next to a Neanderthal, Saiga Antelope, Fruit Bat and you, dear viewer.

Realistic attention to detail and monumental scale frame the work as history painting, or perhaps natural history painting, deliberately set in a habitat so artificial one becomes aware of the self consciously arranged display-almost to the point of absurdity.

One might be easily disarmed by the abundant humor in Topping’s vamping with odd species, but her careful application betrays a palpable tender pathos. As if the prom dress of a disco bunny were not debilitating enough, at her “finest hour” she has been impersonally shelved on a very public display to be scrutinized by the cold academic glare of anthropologist, and busloads of school children out for a field trip.

With playful defiance, Topping makes the best of her situation, lovingly detailing her fantastical surroundings amid the dead and stuffed relics of nature with the charm and dignity of a child hosting a tea party. But like the protagonist in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse- Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty with Death, the indelible stains of sexual development and trauma of experience bleed through even the most escapist fantasy.