Staging reality

Hannah Starkey's photographs are staged fictions in which characters, usually women, feature in beautifully lit, mildly disquieting scenarios. Possessing subtly modulated tones and a seductive 'painterly quality', they occasionally suggest 17th-century Dutch painting.

This new exhibition of seven photographs, however, has a brighter, harder-edged look than the softly lit mises-en-scëne with which the Belfast-born photographer made her name.

In one image, a man wears a huge, fluffy rabbit head and stands in the middle of a kitchen, in surroundings that are rather too clean and sterile. The rabbit's incongruously benign cartoon features, which are turned towards the young child hugging the man's legs, manage to be quietly disconcerting.

In another image, a young woman stands over a row of brightly coloured filing cabinets.

It's difficult to read the woman's expression and the cabinets are so shopnew that you wonder - like one of those mocked-up architectural spaces that feature in the disorientating photographs of German artist Thomas Demand - whether this is a real office or a stage set. A second look suggests you opt for the latter.

Ambiguity reaches greater heights in a picture that features shuttered windows that may or may not look out on to a tree-lined street. It could be a painted backdrop while, just behind the shutters in the foreground, confusing your sense of perspective, you detect the back of a woman's head, a bright splash of red hair among the greys.

Until Jul 25, Interim Art, 21 Herald Street E2. Wed to Sun 11am to 6pm, free. Tel: 020 7729 4112. Tube: Bethnal Green

Hannah Starkey