Eleanor McLean

Eleanor McLean (she/her) born in 1997, is a British artist based in London.

She is a Fine Art graduate from UCA Farnham and current MA Sculpture student at the RCA.

Her practice operates across different disciplines within the realm of sculpture and installation.

The work speaks in poetic forms, of dreamscapes and memories, falling in and out of heterotopias, considering the position of systems of order and belief. She combines found objects with writing and craft, drawing on intimate memories and collective nostalgia within British culture.

Selected recent exhibitions include ~

2022 : Lapped Seams and Silver Linings, Standpoint Gallery residency, London.

2022 : We Wont Stop Showing, SET projects, London.

2021 : First Impressions, SafeHouse 2, Maverick projects, London

2021 : What do we know (anyway?) Bloc Projects, Sheffield, cur. JJ Chan.

2020 : Patio Project, cur. Georgia Stephenson, London.

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My practice is consistently informed by how space can be philosophised as utopia, dystopia and heterotopia, a reference to a concept by Michel Foucault. I use this to understand order and behaviour in space, and how a particular group of heterotopias can bring comfort, happiness and escapism. It is interesting to also consider how happiness is constructed politically and socially; whilst building on Sara Ahmed’s writing, happiness may be understood as something to obtain, promised to us, and an experience changeable due to class and culture. The significance of belief systems and order is also central to my practice in exploring our cultural understanding of happiness, hope and wishes, whilst also the comfort it brings. I am particularly interested in contemporary structures such as astrology which form a collective voice to influence and guide our relationships whilst inspiring us to construct identities amongst the blurring of fictional and non-fictional narratives.

With regards to the work’s domestic influences, I like to also consider the act of daydreaming and remembering, how memory is constructed, and physically how objects of an interior space change and move through time, and then become romanticised. I often collect objects that evoke a nostalgia, combining this with cathartic craft such as tufting, ceramic and writing. My practice seeks to embody and understand nostalgia, interested in how it offers a sense of community and belonging to culture and generation, considering the role of storytelling through families and social media.

Interested in the act of storytelling memories through generations, fragments of the works are inspired by memories. The yellow walls are a shade called primrose yellow, which my dad recalled through an act of storytelling, mistaking the name for promise yellow, a shade he painted their kitchen before deciding it was too bright. The white, plastic, garden, patio chairs borrowed from summers on housing estates. We collect lucky pennies. To buy your mum a house.

The work is reminiscent of heterotopias such as pubs and fairgrounds that within the context of British culture, offer a pursuit of happiness and comfort.

A tasseled, floral embroidered lampshade that hasn’t hung, gathered dust in your bedroom or lounge since 1980. There are dysfunctional objects; might these border on artefacts and art objects. In the corner of the room on top of a broken piano is an old sewing machine. It appears wooden with golden decorative markings. It feels stiff and static. I stare at it, imagining it animating, repairing fragments of fabric, old victorian dresses. If I began to play the piano, what kind of sound would it make? If any sound at all. Do these objects, the various lampshades hung warmly lit above the dusky, sticky tables, offer us something beyond their functional use or previous lives. How do our perceptions of the objects change when moved out of a domestic context, to a pub / bar context, and then into the context of a gallery space?

The concept of a space as a utopia is intangible, operating as fantasies; we will collectively continue to desire and dream. The concept of wishing or dreaming requires a belief system. Such systems create a form of comfort and community, to also provide a sense of order in our lives.

Medium: Mixed media installation

There is a language that breeds amongst technology that borrows from nature. Depicting a utopia to endlessly roam, the web through social media’s rosey lens. A sense of infinity and freedom floating amongst the (i)cloud, where we live immortally, preserving our (random access) memory through Windows into Dreams.

Windows into Dreams is a 3D tufted sculpture made with yarn using a tufting gun and sewn with corduroy.

The work depicts a Windows 98 computer as an impression of the artist's family computer growing up in the early 2000s. The sky on the 'screen' is a replica of the screensaver. The work encourages a reminiscent discourse on past technology through our collective memory as a culture, considering nostalgia as a component of community.

The work sits amongst greenery, drawing connections between the similar language associated with both technology and nature.

Medium: Tufted sculpture

Size: 90 x 118 x 57

Bag for Life — Photographed at Standpoint Gallery by Gabriel Mansfield. Exhibited throughout March 2022 in the show, Lapped Seams and Silver Linings, as part of the Prick and Stitch alliance residency at Standpoint. 36 x 43 x 15 cm

LET'S FACE IT

YOU NEED A HOLIDAY

The appropriated Tesco bag advises, authorises, demands, rewards, materialising in different forms. The phrase was borrowed from a newspaper headline as we came out of the pandemic. I found it interesting to consider what it means to go on holiday and the privilege of being able to go on holiday.