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The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre (photo Jules Lister)
Talk
Rachel Maclean - Artist Talk
10 Oct 2015
Regular hours
- Saturday
- 10:00 – 16:00
Cost of entry
Places are free but limited. Please book at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre reception or by calling 01724 297070 or emailing dominic.mason@northlincs.gov.uk
Address
- St John's Church, Church Square
- Scunthorpe
- DN15 6TB
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Scunthorpe Bus Station
- Scunthorpe Train Station
Join artist Rachel Maclean on the closing day of The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre for a tour of the exhibition and a talk about her work.
About
Join artist Rachel Maclean on the closing day of The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre for a tour of the exhibition and a talk about her work.
Rachel’s work slips between inside and outside of history and into imagined futures, creating hyper-glowing, artificially saturated visions that are both nauseatingly positive and cheerfully grotesque.
For her exhibition The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway she explores themes of class, aspiration and childhood in two multi-channel video works Please Sir… and Let It Go! Maclean is the only actor, and mimes to found audio plundered from a myriad of sources, including Britain’s Got Talent, Jeremy Kyle and The Apprentice. The characters wear heavy make-up, prosthetic noses and fake teeth, an appearance which sits somewhere between a Hogarth satire and cheap-plastic joke shop fancy-dress.
Shot entirely using green-screen, the work creates a synthetic, shape-shifting realm in which an Adidas-striped Oliver Twist mugs a Tudor Prince at knifepoint, a pauper steals £10 from the pocket of Simon Cowell and a vagrant youth is offered heroin by a well-dressed servant.
Set in a bleak yet seductively stylised urban landscape, the work pulls uncomfortably between signifiers of fantasy and social realism, pushing stereotypes towards a grotesque and uneasy tipping point.
This talk coincides with the opening weekend of British Art Show 8 at Leeds Art Gallery which includes a newly commissioned work by Rachel Maclean.
Places are free but limited. Please book at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre reception or by calling 01724 297070 or emailing dominic.mason@northlincs.gov.uk with your name and contact number.
Please Sir… by Rachel Maclean was commissioned by CCA, Glasgow. Let it Go! is shown courtesy of the artist and Daata Editions.
20-21 Visual Arts Centre is a North Lincolnshire Cultural Services venue and is supported by public funding from Arts Council England.
20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Church Square, Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire DN15 6TB. 01724 297070 20-21.epd@northlincs.gov.uk
