Finally managed to see the Rachel Maclean exhibition at The Zabludowicz Collection! As with her other works, Maclean has used green-screen technology to perform against a backdrop she’s designed, in this case a Barbie-Dreamhouse makeover of a Brutalist seminary outside Glasgow. For the first time, she’s used a cast of actors alongside herself; the intensity doesn’t drop for a second. She often uses found audio material and lip-syncs to it: her authoritarian villain here speaks with Kenneth Clark’s voice from the 1969 BBC series Civilisation. And because her film is an exploration of feminism, she subverts his patriarchal, patrician voice, wittily collaging snippets from his series, such as his references to the pagan Venus as an “amorous strumpet” and the Virgin as a “sweet, compassionate, approachable being”.
She repurposes them for a world where social media defines femininity and womanhood – her characters are called Siri and Alexa, among others. In a riotous denouement, Maclean unleashes a volley of voices questioning feminism today and in the recent past. Filled with humour and no little anger, it’s consciously excruciating at times, yet always captivating.
The other works are similarly engaging yet discomforting: Spite Your Face, that we first saw at the Venice Biennale last year, is Maclean’s post-truth retelling of the Pinocchio story and the VR work I’m Terribly Sorry places the viewer in a post-Brexit toytown dystopia, its closing twist tapping into modern Britain’s seething tensions. Maclean’s films are so engulfing that when you emerge, reeling, into the outside world, you feel almost like they’ve spat you out.
