Madeline Mackay: Not Yet Earth
to
Martha Street Studio 11 Martha St, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1A2
Opening reception: Friday, January 11th, 5-8 pm artist will be in attendance
Artist talk: Saturday, January 12th, 2 pm ASL interpretation available by request
Martha Street Studio is pleased to present Not Yet Earth, a solo exhibition of work by Madeline Mackay.
Not Yet Earth explores the materiality of the body and the lines between sense of self, body, and inanimate material. Flesh and materiality permeate the exhibition, which is based on the artist's experience of illness. By repeatedly reconfiguring strips of discarded butchers' meat into patterns and structures, and interpreting this process through drawing, print and video, Mackay interrogates flesh as a material and asks questions about where the self ends and at what point the body ceases to be of the self and becomes other. Every series addresses a different aspect of these questions; CMYK screenprints break down colours so that one substance leaks into the next; videos animate the meat, giving it agency as an entity in its own right; a bank of etchings evidence the artist's repeated attempts to instill coherence into chaotic flesh. The show explores the anxiety that comes with recognising the otherness of the body and renegotiating a relationship with it on new terms.
I explore the nature of flesh in the context of my own changing relationship with my body following illness. Two years ago I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that caused my body to turn against itself and attack the platelets in my blood. I have never been more aware that my flesh has an existence that is independent of mine, or felt more mortal. This work seeks to understand the unique dual character of flesh, which is both body and not body, self and other, and regain a sense of control over it.
Flesh is everywhere in my images. It is sometimes barely suggested and sometimes overt: a hand, a knee or a whole body, or a pile of visceral strands that evoke flesh obliquely. I generate my imagery by recording interactions between my living body and strips of discarded butcher's meat that I twist, knot and arrange in pools of water and mud. The dead flesh is my drawing tool and my creation. Through manipulating it I impose my will on its existence, and also by implication upon my own living flesh.I work with meat because it occupies an in-between place. It is not animate but it is not yet earth, although it is already in the process of breaking down. It is not a body but we attribute the kind of potency to it that we would to a body, feeling it to be similarly abject, uncanny and uncomfortable. Meat marks the transitional moment between animate and inanimate; it is dead and yet it is permeated by a history of being alive. Through this liminal substance I explore the mortality of my own body and its inseparable relationship to matter. - Madeline Mackay
Mackay is a Scottish visual artist currently living and working in Calgary, Canada. She recently completed an MFA in Printmaking at the University of Alberta, Canada, and received her BA (hons) from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, in 2012. She has exhibited in juried, group and solo exhibitions in the UK and Canada and has received awards from institutions including the University of Alberta, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. She has taught drawing and printmaking at the University of Alberta as well as in community venues in Scotland and Canada. Her work is held in collections including the Royal Scottish Academy, Northlands Creative Glass, SGCI Archives, and University of Alberta Art Collections.