Jessie Mac Stevenson’s SKINS at Eccleston Yards

From Sat, 27th Oct to Thus, 1st Nov there will be a new Pop Up by the recent winner of the prestigious Cass Art Prize, Jessie Mac Stevenson, in Eccleston Yards. Curated by Nathan Ladd, it’s the first iteration of a series of ambitious installations where artists will be invited to make new work in response to a unique, temporary space within central London. The pair want to demonstrate an alternative methodology of how art practitioners can exhibit ambitious work in the heart of London; retaining the city’s individuality alongside development.

At the exhibition’s centre is a site-specific installation of three of Mac’s Skins. In the triptych #ff00ff, #00ffff, #ff44f15, she has created an innovative, synthetic ‘skin’ and combined it with the conventional material of the canvas. The traditional and the contemporary, the natural and the industrial are juxtaposed to make a new language of paint and reinvent what it means to apply paint to canvas. The installation was conceived in response to the spatial and architectural features of Eccleston Yards and the building in which the exhibition is housed.

The new works demonstrate how colour is integral to Mac’s practice. The bright colour palette, combining the modern with the digital CYMK colour wheel, has existed from early experiments in the exaggerated hue saturation of her moving images. With Lascaux Studio paint that is used across the laser printing industry, the colours are suggestive of the bold chromes in the current print and digital era. Within a contemporary practice, Mac is working to distinguish a unique language in the reinvention of paint. She is challenging traditional painting techniques and media to create an experience of visual pleasure and spatial uncertainty.