Art & Art History
Voices: Lucy McKenzie
Gallery 400 Lecture Room
1240 West Harrison Street
Lucy McKenzie’s work combines a range of textual and decorative elements and imagery borrowed from the media and the edges of cultural studies. Her practice, encompassing curation, writing, performance, and murals, is best known for its freewheeling installations that combine painterly depictions of athletes with slogans and media detritus. McKenzie’s humorous juxtapositions interrogate the power relationships and categories prevalent in cultural policy, pop music, and pornography. McKenzie’s canvases are loaded with signs that appear at once to be personal and fantastical. As Michael Archer writes, “at every turn the question…whether one was dealing with froth or substance hovered nearby.”
McKenzie (born 1977) has recently had solo exhibitions at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2003) and Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne (2002). She has been in numerous international group exhibitions including the 50th Venice Biennial (2003); Painting on the Move, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2002); and Cabinet’s Hotel Sub Rosa, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles (2002). She studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, Scotland and Kunstakademie Karlsruhe, Germany, and currently lives and works in Glasgow.