Updated statement for Breakthrough

Breakthrough

2013

Wood, varnish

183cm x 104cm x 13cm

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. Breakthrough (2013) is an example of this exploration into an alternative world and a reflection of Gilles Deleuze's conceptualisation of 'a thousand tiny sexes' which inspired its multiple differing drips. 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. This symbolic image 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. Thus, the One side presents linear phallogocentric drips symbolising the phallic construction of sameness and the 'one truth', and the Other side contrasts this with the multiple differing 'labial' drips symbolising 'a thousand tiny sexes'.

*This blog post has been back-dated for continuity purposes. Statement was originally edited on 13th January 2014.