Updated Encounter statement

Encounter

2013

Wood, varnish

106cm x 200cm x 60cm

Hollie Mackenzie explores the notion of the impossible Utopia by creating her own version of a deviant reality in the form of sculpture. She encourages the viewer to interpret this deviant reality and its proximity to the world we live in. By doing this she aims to provoke debate around the unattainable within our society. Encounter (2013) is a reflection of our current reality and also an example of this exploration into an alternative world, with influence of Gilles Deleuze's conceptualisation of 'a thousand tiny sexes' which inspired the multiple differing drips seen in the labial chair. Contrasting the linear phallogocentric drip representing the phallic construction of sameness and the 'one truth' (Irigaray) on the One chair, these drips melting in different directions could appear as though they are resisting the gravity of this world in a desire for a different kind of gravity. The chairs opposing positions bring into play the concept of the phallic One and the labial Other in order to investigate their co-existence and difference. The interactive element of the One chair presenting a symbolic distance to the Other chair represents the creative journey we must take in order to think difference to this phallogocentric image of thought. The symbolic image of Encounter could serve as a visual metaphor for what Mackenzie is proposing as a desire and call for a different kind of world which uses two separate, but equal, female and male symbolic, language and social structures. In suggesting that we find the feminine ways and means of expression through art in order to establish feminine forms of symbolism and structures, it is through creativity that we can enter into a transcendental structure of learning and think rhizomatically in resistance to the traditional phallogocentric image of thought.

*This blog post has been back-dated for continuity purposes. Statement was originally edited on 6th August 2014.