Ingrid McMillan - Play to Audience: a social media addiction

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In Play to Audience: a social media addiction I take a critical view of social media culture and its implications to our humanity.

Seventeen small paintings on paper, 9” x 12”, of people taking selfies are painted quickly and intuitively, where observer becomes the observed and self consciousness is suppressed by the viewer as voyeur.

Seven oil paintings, 28” x 34”, of theatre interiors are painted slowly and in many layers, as a process of fusing organic with inorganic elements.  Loose outlines of human heads suggest at once a conscious, attentive audience, and an unconscious audience, oblivious to being ensnared by social media. I am interested in the gap between participation and addiction.  At the heart of these paintings is our vulnerability of needing to fit in. There is an amoeba-like quality to how we move in and out of consciousness, where we vacillate between free and parasitic.