Press Release

Art Now: Lucy McKenzie - MMIV

Tate Britain  Art Now space
20 September – 9 November 2003

Tate Britain’s Art Now programme reflects current developments in contemporary British art. It consists of up to five exhibitions a year which demonstrate the quality and variety of new art in the UK. The latest exhibition in the series will be Lucy McKenzie’s first solo presentation in London in over two years.

Lucy McKenzie, born in 1977, lives and works in Glasgow. She studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee and at Karlsruhe Kunst Akademie, Germany. McKenzie’s recent solo exhibitions include If It Moves, Kiss It at Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin (2002) and Brian Eno at NAK Aachen (2003). She is also participating in this year’s Venice Biennale.

McKenzie’s art practice is multi-disciplinary and she finds inspiration in a diversity of sources, mixing high art and popular culture, creating events as well as exhibitions. As part of her Art Now project MMIV, McKenzie will present a new film showing edited footage of her live performance with Gdansk artist Paula Olowska. In this, they played caricatured roles of ‘working women’: an architect and an artist. A key theme of the performance was the manipulation of reality, and this idea is enhanced by its presentation as a film, with an atmospheric soundtrack by composer Marcin Dutka.

A handmade silkscreen year-planner for 2004 continues to evoke the notion of the artist as ‘cultural worker’. McKenzie is interested in aspects of socially-engaged art and wishes to explore the role of charity in Britain, and in capitalist society in general. Considering her own position as an artist and feminist, McKenzie also wishes to highlight the activities of the Warsaw based charity La Strada, whose aim is to combat the trafficking of women from East to Western Europe, where they are forced into prostitution.

The next exhibition in the Art Now series will feature new work by Ian Kiaer (22 November 2003 - 25 January 2004).

Art Now Lightbox
19 July – 14 September 2003
Admission free
Open everyday 10.00 – 17.50
As part of the Art Now series, Tate Britain presents an eight-week film and video programme in a specially designated space adjacent to the Manton Entrance on Atterbury Street. Changing every Monday, this new strand of the programme shows new and recent single-screen film and video works by artists working in Britain today. The remaining artists films in the series are as follows:

8 – 14 September 2003 Saskia Olde Wolbers – Placebo 2002

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