SUPERCUT x EDWINA MCLENNAN
22 February — 27 March 2022
Deep Dive
Edwina McLennan / Deep Dive (2022) / printed velvet, sequin, acrylic, cotton thread, interfacing / Photo courtesy of the artist
Borrowing principles from Surrealism and its study of dreams, psychology and everyday life, Deep Dive responds to today’s transient, hyper-saturated and consumerist world. As individuals, we are incessantly fed manufactured imagery, information, and commodities that inform the way we see ourselves and relate to the world around us. The ways in which this is infiltrated within daily life are forever evolving and expanding, which has created ongoing discussions around ‘image making’, and the ways in which one experiences and inhabits the world. Drawing upon Carl Jung’s ideas on the collective unconscious, I contemplate the primal desire for humans to connect and interact and explore how this translates in today’s consumerist and digital world.
Through playful material exploration, Deep Dive examines how images are constructed and manipulated, highlighting the perceptual conditions relevant to how we consume information and technology. I explore the capacity for an image or narrative to constantly transform, in which space, time and memory are experienced fluidly. Working with collaged images in textiles, painting and stitching, Deep Dive playfully navigates the liminal space that connects the natural world and the digital world; the personal and universal; and language and perception.
Watch Edwina’s artist talk online now.
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Outer Space Window Gallery
2R-C, 420 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley Q 4006
(map here)
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Edwina McLennan’s practice encompasses painting, installation, mixed media, textiles and soft sculpture. Her practice is greatly informed by her time spent in Antwerp working with textiles, costume, and fashion. Delving into the transient playground of consumerism and oversaturation, she draws from an array of printed media. Using hand techniques such as painting, collaging, and stitching with mass manufacturing processes like digital imaging and printing, her work explores both the handmade and the mechanical to deconstruct the ambivalence that interconnects the digital world and the ‘real’ world; the personal and the universal; dreams and reality.
McLennan’s practice unites the invigoration of painting, the provocative nature of the tactile, and the “bodily connection” of soft sculpture. Textiles are a key material in her work, representing something ingrained into daily rituals, cultural identities, and personal histories, whilst also rooted in a longstanding relationship with consumerism, the history of female domesticity and the handmade.
Documentation by Cian Saunders
SUPERCUT is supported by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government Initiative and is presented in partnership with Artspace Mackay and Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns.