Artist Rachel Maclean s firs permanent outdoor commission created in Jupiter Artland in West Lothian combines architecture and animation ONCE upon a time, in the middle of the woods, there was an upside-down shop. And in the upside-down shop there was an upside-down girl … “You follow the hearts,” the artist Rachel Maclean tells me as we walk through the trees. On the ground in front of us a trail of candy-coloured cordiform tiles are embedded in the soil. We are in a bosky glade in Jupiter Artland, near Ratho and Maclean is taking me to see her new work. Entitled upside mimi ᴉɯᴉɯ uʍop (yes, it s supposed to be like that), it is her first permanent outdoor commission. It takes her familiar concerns (gender, femininity, body image, identity, late-era capitalism) and her traditional aesthetics (pinkness, cuteness, flamboyance) into new territory. For once the video artist’s fantasies have been made concrete. Or plasterboard and wood at any rate.
Fisun Güner
, May 1st, 2021 08:18
With a new solo show opening at Edinburgh s Jupiter Artland in a week, Rachel Maclean talks to Fisun Güner about film-making, fairytales, and looking forward
The imagery is often violent – tongues get cut out, noses yanked off, human limbs cannibalised. The world of Scottish artist Rachel Maclean is a Grand Guignol horror show, but the horror comes encased in a big, gooey powder-pink meringue. Her films capture something of the heightened aesthetics of My Little Pony, but the appropriation and hybridity of pop-visual cultures is far-ranging, from Disney to video games, pop videos and stage musicals, social media, and even – especially when she dwells on Scottish identity – the 18th and 19th century political satires of Hogarth and Cruickshank. And just as we’re getting hopelessly lost in these pimped-up surreal fantasias, the presence of emojis and hearts pull us into an instantly recognisable online world.