Rachel Maclean
British, 1987
Rachel Maclean lives and works in Glasgow. Working across video, installation, painting, and digital media, Maclean creates hyper-saturated worlds shaped by the aesthetics of advertising, fairy tales, children’s television, gaming, and social media. Using green-screen technology, digital collage, elaborate costumes, and performance, she frequently inhabits all characters herself, constructing seductive yet unsettling narratives that examine consumerism, gender performance, identity, and the emotional economies of contemporary image culture. Recent works have explored motherhood, technology, and AI-generated imagery, exposing the artificiality and excess embedded within contemporary systems of representation and desire. Solo exhibitions and screenings include: MAMA, Kunsthalle Giessen, Germany (2024); WOT U :-) ABOUT?, Tate Britain (2016–17); and Spite Your Face, Scotland + Venice at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). Her work has also been presented at Hayward Gallery, HOME, National Galleries of Scotland, Zabludowicz Collection, Jupiter Artland, and as part of the British Art Show 8.
