OVERVIEW
Fleshy naked bodies juxtaposed against cool malleable textures, ask to what end will the pursuit of pleasure take; with the sting of passion or the emptiness of a glove? ‘Oversized Swords, Chains and Gloves’ features a new body of work and is a window into the recurring themes that provoke and inform Lindsey Jean McLean’s practice.
Common to each work is a preoccupation with how intimate relationships — those with others and yourself — shape the perception of our interior and physical landscapes. It is a world of humble ferocity, filled as much with desperation and romance, as it is with tenderness, melancholy and solitude. Together these paintings provide a glimpse into the vicissitudes of self acceptance, falling in love, its ecstasy and absence.
McLeans canvases are woven with stories that evoke the rawness of the world we live in now - interrogating the fragility of the human condition and the carceral structures that inhibit our world, tirelessly searching for new and alternative ways of loving and self exploration.
ARTWORKS
LINDSEY JEAN MCLEAN
Lindsey Jean McLean’s work questions the historical construct of femininity in painting. Bedecked in a rich colour palette suggesting tactile honeys and velvets, these characters are in movement and entanglement, trapped in acts of concealment and destruction. McLean uses reoccurring motifs such as feather boas, fans and veils - transformative objects that obscure the gaze within her works. She subverts the historically patriarchal medium of oil paint to dismantle and create a new space to view femininity.