When Richard Billingham opened up his home life to world he made a statement. Some might say a bold one. Some might say a foolish one. Either way, it was statement that was timely and urgent.

Billingham's works show what would be severely understated if described as his dysfunctional home life. This is glimpse of 'real-life' includes images of his drunken father, the huge physicality of his mother, and his troubled brother. All of these people are problematic to us, the viewer, and that is the source of power of these images. However, the discomfort of the viewer situation is further complicated by the role of the artist in the production of these images.

We are invited into an area of life that exists outside our normal lives into a world of domestic catastrophe, of an urban existence that still largely remains hidden. Our invitation, though, make us feel uneasy; it unsettles us. Are we here to judge, are we here to mock, to laugh; or are we expected to empathise with the more troubling aspects of our own lives? Billingham makes careful use of an aspect of contemporary visual language that has enormous cultural currency at this time: the abject. We are purposefully shown the dirt and squalor of this family home. The vomit stained toilet. The scrap littered kitchen floor. The beer stained walls. In short, the horror of his everyday life.

This is, then, a world to be reviled and deemed disgusting.

Again and again, the viewer is again forced into the uncomfortable position of wrestling with their own morals and judgements. What makes this a more difficult task, though, is the fact that Billingham is implicit in all of these scenes as both son and brother of the protagonists. Why does he stand isolated as an observer, when he could help? Why would he want to show the world this home? Are we asked to laugh at it? Or laugh with him, with an understanding borne of attachment to these 'characters'?

The safest ground available to us is to take refuge in the fact that we know the language that he is using. The unnerving and the disquieting has become second nature to young British artists, and we are now accustomed to laughing with our shock. We've seen Mark Quinn fill sculpture with blood, we've walked around Hirst's bisected cattle, and we've shuffled around the irony of Lucas' innuendoes.

However, to see Billingham's work in the light of these works is to miss the point. These images are dealing with an arrested reality, a reality that is almost too close to home. We are backed into a corner, forced to questioned our own sense of moral correctness by the harsh nature of his honesty. If we laugh at his families antics, we must do it briefly and carefully, with a slyness that is afforded those wish to avoid hypocrisy.

If you're caught, though, just remember to say you we're laughing with them, not at them. And keep walking.

Rays a laugh is published by Scalo.