"It's difficult to talk about Southwood's work without talking about the artist herself because she so unashamedly bares herself, warts-and-all, to an audience. Plumbing the depths of her conservative, white, middle-class Afrikaans upbringing, Southwood unearths a nasty cycle of repression, abuse and the coping mechanisms offered her by this society where women occupy a silent and haunted interior. Southwood's candidness about her own disposition leaves a viewer trapped between doubting her sincerity and wanting to know less about a near stranger. 'Too close for comfort', her first one person show, held in 2000, presented the viewer with this dilemma in an all too attractive way."