'My work slips inside and outside of history and into imagined futures, creating hyper-glowing, artificially saturated visions that are both nauseatingly positive and cheerfully grotesque'.-- Rachel Maclean
'Glasgow-based artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean works largely in green screen composite video and digital print, often exhibiting this alongside props, costumes and related sculpture and painting. She is often the only actor or model in her work, playing a variety of characters that mime to appropriated audio and toy with age and gender. These clones embody unstable identities: conversing, interacting and shifting between cartoonish archetypes, ghostly apparitions and hollow inhuman playthings.
'Her current work is about contemporary British culture and she recreates work in broadcast media, entertainment, and advertising genres such as talent competitions, science fiction animation, children’s shows, royal messages and fireside chats, and product marketing. Her work tends to comment and parody culture through the vehicle of these genres. Fantasy, role playing and humour feature heavily in her work. She works with green screen technique and digital animation. She creates sounds tracks with music and dialogue to accompany her films. Additionally, she makes digital prints of images related to her projects that resemble either out-takes/stills or advertisements and marketing posters. Text is often included.
'In her recent videos such as Over The Rainbow, Rachel create synthetic spaces in which Katy Perry discuses teeth whitening with an aristocratic cat, a decapitated diva dances to hip pop and a pastel blue dog sings for The Queen. Stylistically her work explores the aesthetic of Poundland, Youtube, Manga and Hieronymus Bosch, spliced together with MTV-style green screen and channel-changing cuts. Maclean is fascinated by representations of other worlds and unearthly embodiments, and explores the ways in which they project contemporary anxieties and ideals into a mysterious and seductive beyond.
'"My work is inspired by a number of things at once," Maclean explains, "and often hinges on a bizarre combination of two apparently conflicting influences, for example Susan Boyle and Heavy Metal in my video I Dreamed A Dream. Where I live at the time I make work is also very influential, as I believe different cultures have different fantasies related to place. For example, I stayed in America for 6 months and became much more concerned by an idealised notion of Scotland, as a land of castles, lochs, monsters and kilts. Whereas I found growing up in Scotland, you are very divorced from this fantasy, and instead the imagination is much more directed to the US, and the glamour and intrigue it conveys to the outsider."' -- collaged
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Pix & Stills
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Further
Rachel Maclean Website
Rachel Maclean's tumblr
'RACHEL MACLEAN AND MULTI-COLOURED EXCRETIONS OF HYPER-KITSCH'
Ben Robinson interviews RM @ Yuck 'n Yum
'Rachel Maclean: GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN!
'Where I Make: Rachel Maclean'
'Rachel Maclean wins Margaret Tait Award'
'Rachel Maclean Interview: Going Bananas'
'5 Questions for: Rachel Maclean'
'Artist Review ONE: Rachel Maclean'
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Extras
5 questions with Rachel Maclean
The Skinny Shop: Rachel MacLean video interview
Rachel Maclean interviewed by Summerhall
Rachel Maclean directed music video for Errors' 'Pleasure Palaces'
Rachel Maclean directed music video for The Phantom Band's 'Everybody Knows It's True'
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Interview
from Daily Metal
Can you tell us how would you describe your work?
Rachel Maclean: My work slips inside and outside of history and into imagined futures, creating hyper-glowing, artificially saturated visions that are both nauseatingly positive and cheerfully grotesque. I am a Glasgow based artist working largely in green screen composite video and digital print, often exhibiting this alongside props, costumes and related sculpture and painting. I am the only actor or model in my work and invent a variety of characters that mime to appropriated audio and toy with age and gender. These clones embody unstable identities: conversing, interacting and shifting between cartoonish archetypes, ghostly apparitions and hollow inhuman playthings. My videos attempt to stylistically unify the aesthetic of The Dollar Store, Youtube, Manga, Hieronymus Bosch and High Renaissance painting with MTV style green screen and channel changing cuts.
What has prompted you to create your beautifully grotesque beings?
RM: I've always been fascinated by images which are at once compelling and repulsive. I like to toe a fine line between an aesthetic of benign, saccharine cuteness and a distastefully baroque form of grotesquely. I take inspiration from a whole range of sources, everything from Disney Princess to William Hogarth. I think the expression or experience of disgust, whether at a work of art or a bodily function, is very interesting and is indicative of our complex social relationship with others. It is also often reflective of the desire to recoil and distance ourselves from the experience of a particular class, race, gender or sexual orientation. I think someone like Katie Price is a good example of this relationship and in many ways performs the function of the Victorian Freak Show for the 21st Century. She's reflective upon a certain kind of social class that are regarded as wealthy but tastelessly brash by the conservative middle classes. Everything about her image and actions entertains us through it's grotesquely exaggerated performance of this stereotype and confirms for many the sense of their own relative superiority.
Do you consider your work political?
RM: Yes, in some ways. Although there is some work that is more directly political than others. For example, the recent video I made called The Lion and The Unicorn explores the interrelationship between Scottish and British national identity. This is obviously a very contentious issue given the upcoming Referendum on Scottish Independence in 2014 and I was keen to couch the work very clearly within this debate. However, in this case I intended that my opinion on the issue was left ambiguous, as I was more interested in provoking discussion and at some level unveiling the absurdity of the signifier and semi-historical fictions that play into contemporary political decision making and help form an abstracted sense of national pride.
Would you consider your work is related to the feminist cause? A clear example would be Skin & Bones? Can you explain what is this about?
RM: Yes, I intend for my work to be feminist. Again, this is made explicit in some works and maybe less so in others. In the example you mentioned from the series 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', I intended to create images of woman who appear sexually available and with all the basic masquerade of sexiness, but nonetheless fail in their achievement of this ideal, rendering them tragic, ugly and grotesque. Here I was keen to look at the representation of what I would regard as the Spice Girls, 'Girl Power' brand of feminism or to update things a bit, what Beyonce would refer to as a powerful 'independent woman'. I'm pretty cynical about this kind of pop feminism and believe the it is in many ways it is just a rebranded sexism, which drives an ideal of liberation through financial success, but still expects women to fulfill their role as sexual objects.
In your work you're the only model and the only actor. Why is it that?
RM: At some level it's playful and childish, I like dressing up, there is something liberating and interesting about pretending to be someone else. It helps you reflect in a more open way on your own sense of self and question fixed ideas of the person you think you are or want to be. I like to play out and explore the idea that identity and gender are at some level a performance or masquerade and try to create narratives in which very fixed notions of self are exaggerated to the point they become absurd, or alternatively begin to fall apart and are gradually revealed to be unstable and fraudulent.
How do you prepare all your characters?
RM: I design all the costumes, props and face-paint for my work and the characters are usually tied into the larger aesthetic idea for the video. All my characters are an amalgam of reference points and never just a simple imitation of a specific person or typical costume. For example, in my recent video The Lion and The Unicorn, the character of 'The Queen' at once references Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elisabeth, wearing a costume recombined from an array of Union Jack merchandise available to celebrate the 2012 Diamond Jubilee.
Most of your work is via digital print and video. How important for an artist is the digital era?
RM: I think the digital era is as important as you want it to be as an artist. I love the possibilities that are opened up by programs like Photoshop and After Effects, but I also think that what interests me about this kind of software is the sense in which it is only ever an adaptation or simulation of methods and techniques available in non-digital media. Almost every tool in Photoshop exists in a physical form, take for example the paintbrush, the pen, the paint-bucket and the hand tool. They don't necessarily perform exactly the same function, but they use material tools and processes as a starting point. When working I'm often keen to bring styles and processes from older media, particularly painting, into a digital space. Additionally, I think with any celebration of an advance in technology there is always a concurrent denial and nostalgia for the past. For many artists, computer generated images only highlight the nuances of older technologies, for example a lot of people are going back to work in analogue video and film as they recognize it has a quality that can't be achieved through digital video.
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Show
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Over The Rainbow (short edit, 2013)
'Inspired by the Technicolor utopias of children's television, Over The Rainbow (2013) invites the viewer into a shape-shifting world inhabited by cuddly monsters, faceless clones and gruesome pop divas. Shot entirely using green-screen the film presents a computer generated environment, which explores a dark, comedic parody of the fairytale, video game and horror movie genres.'-- RM
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Lolcats (short edit, 2013)
'Lolcats -- inspired by the Internet meme of the same name -- explores an amalgam of past and present manifestations of cat worship. Shot entirely against green-screen the video presents a mutable space, at once a mysterious lost civilisation and a modern day touristic fun park. The narrative centres on a young female protagonist, presenting her in moments of intrigue, fear, metamorphosis and decay. Journeying through this erratic environment she encounters a bejewelled Katy Perry discussing dental hygiene with an aristocratic cat, stumbles upon an army of hostile feline cyborgs and is surgically dissected by a gothic physician. Maclean plays every character in the film, inventing a variety of personas that mime to appropriated audio and toy with age and gender. These clones embody unstable identities: conversing, interacting and shifting between cartoonish archetypes, ghostly apparitions and hollow inhuman playthings.'-- RM
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Germs (2013)
'Germs (2013) is a 3-minute green-screen video, which follows a glamorous female protagonist through a series of advertising tropes. Moving from a perfume to a bathroom cleaner commercial, she converses with a persuasive masked woman and becomes increasingly paranoid about the omnipresence of microscopic germs. Rachel plays every character in the piece.' -- RM
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Going Bananas! (2010)
'Going Bananas! responds to the complex identity of the banana. Creating an alternate reality, part fantasy, part commercial playground, which looks at the function of laughter, erotic freedom and taboo, as well as Western relationships to ‘Otherness’ and the patronising implications of the exotic. It creates an otherworldly space, a nature documentary come cabinet of curiosity, part slapstick, part Busby Berkely ‘Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat’. A hilariously nauseating carnival of banana based product placement, which at once seduces the consuming eye and insights oversaturated repulsion.'-- RM
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I Dreamed A Dream (2009)
'Hard to ignore, aurally or in any other sense, is Rachel MacLean's film I Dreamed A Dream, turning a Susan-Boyle-ish appearance on a talent show into a metal-zombie-slasher fest.'-- RM
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Tale as Old as Time (2009)
'Tale as Old as Time tells the story of Beauty and the Beast through the myth of the Loch Ness Monster, creating a shape-shifting space which confuses the relationship between science and superstition. Set against the sugary sounds of Celine Dion and alluding to the fantasy worlds of Super Mario, Second Life and Braveheart, the video playfully explores a manifestation of the fairytale for the Youtube generation.'-- RM
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Tae Think Again (2008)
'Tae Think Again re-thinks Scotlands heritage. Slipping inside and outside of history, and into imagined futures, the hyper-glowing, artificially saturated screen is both nauseatingly positive and cheerfully grotesque. The video centres on a recurrent female figure who jumps schizophrenically between IT girl, contemporary politician, ancient monarch and musical nymph, to be finally become a lethargic decapitated head.'-- RM
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Science Is Fiction (2008)
'Science is Fiction is an experimental film by Rachel Maclean.'-- RM
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Hit Me Baby! (2008)
'Hit Me Baby! is a video art piece by Rachel Maclean, inspired by the life and influence of Britney Spears.'-- RM
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p.s. Hey. Thanks and props to _Black_Acrylic who turned me on to RM's work. Here: giant heatwave plus the umpteenth consecutive night of impaired sleep = warning of something in the p.s. that I'm too spaced out to predict, but mental laziness for sure. ** Rewritedept, Thanks re: the post, man. 'Mine's' great, yeah. Well, very happy to have you on board the Pollard religious procession. There are so many places to start with them. I mean, I assume you've gathered how prolific he is by now. He's released two fantastic albums in just the last two months. My favorite of his solo albums is 'Kid Marine'. With GbV, there's not a not great album by them. Cool you got those first two Alice Cooper LPs. That band was god up through 'Billion Dollar Babies', if you ask me. My week is starting poorly, I think, given tiredness and heat. I have to go pay for and pick up a couple of birthday presents for that upcoming important birthday today, and I'm just hoping I can stumble in the right directions. ** Mononoke Paradice, Your Nunchi is very correct. Oh, don't worry about interrupting me. I like that. ** Billy Lloyd, Billy! Holy moly! How sweet it is to see you, my pal! How you been? Wow, cool, hi! I'll go find your email. I'm so sleepy that I forgot to check my email this morning even thought it's the first thing I always do. Welcome back! Lots of love! ** Grant Scicluna, Freezing your ass off, fuck you, man! Fuck you! Kidding, of course. I guess that faux-outburst was one of those things I was warning everyone about. No, seriously, lucky you. I might kill somebody who didn't deserve it to freeze my ass off at the moment. Great about your script, but what's wrong with that one movement? Can you tell/say? Tricks here are okay if you remove the problem of days of snowballing tiredness and the liquidity of the fraction of an inch of air that extends out from my skin in every direction. Novel's maybe happening, yeah. My novels early on? An almost unreadable, fragmented mess to any brain but my own, and kind of to mine too, but I can see the outlines of the puzzle. ** _Black_Acrylic, A one on one thank for the RM alert that occasioned this galerie 'show'. Got your day. Awesome, thank you! It'll launch here next Monday. You're the best! Glad the heat begged off where you are. The forecast here doesn't have the same relief in any kind of immediate store, but they don't call them forecasts for no good reason. ** David Ehrenstein, There are a bunch of untranslatable French words/terms that weren't in that list, but I'm too brain dead to remember even a single one. ** S., I wish hashtags were more interesting than they are. They lack poetry somehow or something. Really? Being an American kid who grew up with a French literary education, I don't know. Words from other languages that reinforce the limitations of our language are always very exciting to me or something. Crazy Emos? Impossible. ** Steevee, It sounds like it'll be just fine, but I understand why you're worried. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, G! Got the email this time. Ace, really ace, man. I've already gotten the post set up, and it'll launch here on this coming Friday. Thanks a lot of tons! An ARC would/will be a serious boon to my internal world, man. Raining? Where's Paris's rain? Hold on. The forecast says there's a slight chance on Wednesday. Fat chance. Sorry, I'm whining. ** Misanthrope, That rule of thumb for teachers makes total sense. Could totally work, is totally creepy of the teachers. She's her own worst enemy, that L.A. I'm not worried about her reemergence. Her lies aren't even interesting or well calculated anymore. Dude, I'm just trying to help you out on the Staxus front. No endorsement intended. Coincidentally, however, I was fishing for next month's escorts post and who was on the market but one of Staxus's 'superstars' 'Tim Shaw'. Luckily, his ad text was melancholy and inadvertently literary in the way I like, so he made the cut. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. That last minute tweaking can drive you crazy, yeah. I used to fiddle very late in the process, far beyond the patience of my publishers, but I've gotten better at letting things go. That said, every late stage fiddle I did was the right call. ** Bill, Hi, B. Yay re: the new laptop's full implementation, and Tsai Ming Liang would be a very cool breeze, and there's no higher compliment at the moment. ** Kyler, Thanks re: my niceness talk. Interesting that you got yours from your mother. I don't know where mine came from. It just happened, maybe partly as a reaction against my parents' 'niceness', which was always full of agendas and was hiding guilt trips. Tough love ... I can't do that, I don't know why. I feel like if I start using whatever kindness I have to implement some strategy, it'll de-purify the kindness whereupon it will no longer be kindness. I'm kind of more into the idea that there's this state called kindness, and I'm just channeling it helplessly or something when I'm being kind. Or something. ** Bollo, Man, fuck this motherfucking heat! Thanks about the 'Weaklings' cover and about my poems. Kind of you. Le1f is very cool, yeah. Ben Frost ...do I know his stuff? I can't remember this morning. The Jay Z Pace thing? I didn't take it seriously or think about it very much. Whatever. Art world shenanigans. The Marina Abramovic part made me nauseous, but she always makes me nauseous. Later, J. Get through the heat. I'll try to too. ** Okay, I made it. Please see what you think about Rachel Maclean's work today, thank you. See you tomorrow by hook or crook.