Artist Statement | Lyndsay McKay
Drawing in part, from experiences as a practicing nurse, this body of work explores ways of transforming materials into a gestalt of cellular viscerality – a series of “biomorphic landscapes”, evocative of pathogenic growths, bacterial organisms and marine life. The interstitial spaces become maze-like canals, in a hint toward cardiovascularity and an internal system of highways which carry the regard for vitality and breath; and perhaps a reminder of our own primordial crawl from water. Of further interest, are concepts surrounding the post-human realm, a biologization of the machine and an exploration of how the intersection of biology, architecture and industry can reimagine life on cellular and subcellular levels – thus mapping the constantly evolving dependencies that exist between objects, bodies and environments.
Each latex cell in this work is handheld in place until injected plaster takes shape and hardens within. One fragment relies on the next in order to maintain its strength in position and growth. My own body, my hands and my gesture places each component intuitively. Through this work, I become both factory and machine. I become the biology – inherent and imagined. I become evidence of embodied thought and systematic organization. I become the power plant, the big corporation and the top tier of the hierarchy within a journey of personal insistence over all mechanisms of control, guiding the pattern as it continues to emerge in an empowered and methodical dance.
Over time however, latex becomes thin and fragile. Like waring skin, it begins tear open and fold. The material’s inevitable dehiscence soon exposes its underlying tortured forms; brittle plaster and empty pores, fingerprinted with the notion of memory – powerful traces of time and place – grounded in its own historical precedence and carrying the ephemeral qualities of dust and bone. I am forced to face the reality of the catastrophic moment; the possibility of a landscape without order, without abundance, without personhood or leisure. I am forced to accept an awareness that this may be an accurate depiction of what life already is.
