World Creating Seduction: Characters, Cartoon and Digital Dystopia
Lydia Chan, Andy Holden and Rachel Maclean in conversation with NOW Gallery curator Jemima Burrill
6.30pm
With Lydia Chan’s alien universe ‘Your Ship Has Landed’, NOW Gallery presents a talk with three artists who think beyond the normal. To look at how they create worlds and understand their practice in relation to digital creation and imagination. How the world they create in their heads becomes actualised and how they, in different ways, always explore divergent and often extreme themes to explain their outlook.
The talk will include free refreshments and an opportunity to enjoy an evening visit of Lydia Chan’s exhibition. We welcome questions and thoughts about any of the subjects explored.
Rachel Maclean
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1987, artist Rachel Maclean has spent the last decade showcasing her ground-breaking work in galleries, museums, film festivals and on television. Working across a variety of media, including video, digital print and VR, she makes complex and layered works that reference politics, fairy tales, celebrity culture and more.
She has shown her work widely, both in the UK and internationally, receiving critical acclaim in the spheres of film and visual art. Her major exhibitions include solo shows at Tate Britain and National Gallery, London; Arsenal Contemporary, New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany; KWM Artcentre, Beijing; and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Maclean represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2017 with her film commission Spite Your Face.
Rachel’s latest solo exhibition ‘That’s not Mi!’ is currently on show at Josh Lilley Gallery in London.
Andy Holden
Andy Holden is an artist and musician whose approach is characterised by a desire to connect to audiences while retaining his own idiosyncratic internal references and motivations. Often concerned with our relationship to the past and how we make sense of ourselves, his work tackles history, nostalgia, and philosophical enquiry. Although the themes of his work are profound, Holden uses familiar lo-fi forms to express them. Cartoon characters, beer bottles covered in plaster, charity shop finds, and knitted sculptures all feature in his work. The ability to evoke both the burdens of existence and a childlike appreciation of the world around defines Holden’s unique approach to how an artist should go about their practice.
Lydia Chan
A self-defined maximalist, Lydia is a set designer and multidisciplinary artist who loves monsters, designer toys and cartoons. The artist’s bold and narrative building aesthetic has established her as one of the most exciting young set designers working in the industry today, with clients including Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney, Vogue China, Gucci and Converse.
‘Happy Data :)’ from the series ‘We Want Data’, Rachel Maclean, 2016, Commissioned by Artpace, San Antonio and HOME, Manchester
‘World as Cartoon’, Andy Holden, 2017