Sifting fact from fiction in the work of Jamie Shovlin is a tricky business, so one embarks on an interview with the rising young star of the art world with all the sensors primed to detect fakery. I call him on his mobile at the allotted time but go straight through to voicemail. An hour later he picks up. He says he is in Basel. And perhaps he is. There is certainly a hubbub in the background. But maybe that is punters at a bar in Ibiza. Or his local boozer in Streatham, South London. It is impossible not to spend the whole conversation wondering if you have missed the point and are going to look rather foolish later on.

This unease is prompted by Shovlin’s track record. He has made a name for himself as a master of deception and cleverer people than this interviewer have fallen for his artistic forgeries. Most famously, he was behind the exhibition in 2004 of sketches and drawings that were supposedly by a precocious 13-year-old schoolgirl called Naomi V. Jelish. The exhibition told the bizarre story of how the girl and her family disappeared from their Kent home shortly after her father had drowned. Her art was said to have been rescued from the house by one of her teachers, John Ivesmail, and the whole story appeared to be backed up by newspaper cuttings and tear-stained diaries. Charles Saatchi, who bought the work for £25,000 and displayed it at his gallery, said that he believed in Naomi V. Jelish until halfway through seeing the show for the first time when he realised that the names of the girl and the teacher were anagrams of Jamie Shovlin.

The artist followed that by making the Beck’s Futures shortlist with Lustfaust: a Folk Anthology 1976-1981. Here he documented the career of the “Krautrock” band, including providing snatches of the music. Lustfaust, of course, never existed, except as the creation of Shovlin, who had gone to inordinate lengths with his fakery, even building numerous web-sites about the band. He says that in both these fake exhibitions his intention was for the viewer to realise that they were being duped and then to look afresh at the work. They didn’t all; some came up to Shovlin to boast of having seen the band play live.

Now Shovlin has trained his sights on America. An interesting move, you might think, given that the only time he has spent in the US was a trip to New York last year. In terms of his new exhibition, A Dream Deferred, he rather wishes he had never been “because there would be a kind of secondhand purity in this project”. The point of this new work, he explains, is to see how individuals form a view of history – in this case of the past 50 years of the 20th century in America – from the myriad sources they encounter. His starting point was his parents’ dreams of America, and the show features DVD footage of his mum and dad talking about albums by American artists that they purchased over the years and which feature in various forms in the show. One of the records represented is Hotel California by the Eagles. Shovlin’s acrylic on canvas, however, reverses the tone of the background landscape, to suggest that the Eagles “were as guilty as anyone of the ‘crimes’ they wrote about”. The eclecticism of the show reflects the varied sources that create an individual’s view of history. Shovlin is keen on maps. A 1957 US Navy map is an American-centric view of the world. A map of the US identifying the birthplace of 600 Playboy Playmates and noting their ambitions is intended to articulate the theme of “dreams gone unrealised”.

On the face of it, this work seems to be dealing with events from a more innocent time. He has “reimagined” letters sent to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, a homegrown American terrorist incarcerated before Islamist terror became the great threat. Shovlin says that the Vietnam era looms over many of the cultural snapshots in this new work and that resonates with what is happening in America today. He is adamant that he “never wanted to present a thing that was antiAmerican. I love America as much as many of the things about it deeply disturb me.”

He says that his “central research question” was “How do you make a sense of history when you have such a variety of different sources?” Once again he is exploring his favourite theme, “that fluidity between fact and fiction”.

This new show is “a continuation of earlier projects, perhaps a more sophisticated version of those earlier projects”. So is he seeking to fool us again? “It’s always better for me to stay on the fence in regard to that.” Earlier this year he and fellow artist Sigrid Holmwood, who was then his girlfriend, talked in The Times about sharing life and work. They have now split. “That is over, sadly. That’s all I can say really. She’s a good friend and will continue to be. I’m a big fan of her work.”

And after three exhibitions in two years at the Riflemaker gallery in London he has moved to the larger Haunch of Venison. “I needed a new challenge. I needed a new place to think about working in and a new set of people to work with.” But is he talking about real people or figments of his fecund imagination? We may have to wait for the opening to find out. And even then there’s no guarantee of being sure.

Jamie Shovlin: A Dream Deferred, Haunch of Venison, Haunch of Venison Yard, W1 (www.haunchofvenison.com 020-7495 5050), July 6-August 18

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