- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Bio-
Jillian Mcdonald is a Canadian artist, currently living in New York. She is Associate Professor of Fine Art at Pace University, where she also curates and co-directs the Pace Digital Gallery. Originally from Winnipeg, she dreams of the snow-covered prairie.
Recent solo shows and projects include Moti Hasson Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents in New York; Third Avenue Gallery in Vancouver; The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Third Avenue Gallery in Chicago; 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia; vertexList Gallery and ArtMoving Projects in Brooklyn; TPW (presented at The Drake Hotel) and YYZ in Toronto; Video Pool in Winnipeg; and Edge Media in Newfoundland. Group exhibitions and festivals featuring her work include The Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany, The Krannert Museum in Illinois; MMOCA in Wisconsin, The Whitney Museum's Artport, Year Zero One in Toronto, Manifestation d'Art Internationale de Québec, 404 International Festival of Electronic Art in Argentina, La Sala Naranja in Spain, The Sundance Online Film Festival in Utah, The Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, La Biennale de Montréal, ISEA 2004 in Estonia, and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France.
Mcdonald received grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, Soil New Media, Turbulence, The Gunk Foundation, NYSCA, The Experimental Television Center, Thirdplace.org, and Pace University. She lectures regularly in North America and Europe about her work and attends numerous residencies including The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Program and Harvestworks in New York; DAIMON, Sagamie, and La Chambre Blanche in Québec; CFAT in Halifax; Em-Media in Calgary; and The Western Front in Vancouver. She is a 2008 resident at The Headlands Center for the Arts in California and a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Video Fellow.
Mcdonald's work is featured and reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and The Village Voice, among others. A discussion of Me and Billy Bob appears in Stalking, a book by Bran Nicol.
Recently she discovered playing keyboard, backpacking, rock climbing, cycling, and running half marathons with Beckley Roberts. In 2007 she ran her first marathon in Atlanta, GA. Some of her favourite people are strangers.
Artist statement-
My work in video, web art, and public intervention is often performative and relational.
In my recent videos, I am interested in the American cult of celebrity, the fantasy that buoys extreme fandom, and the mechanisms of fear as entertainment at work in horror films. I am interested in the ways in which film genres affect their audiences, and in the fan sub-cultures that fuel them. The presence of my image in this work serves not as a self-portrait, but as a projection of universal emotions such as desire or fear. Screen Kiss features romantic scenes from Hollywood films starring popular actors into which I insert my image and manipulate the existing narrative in a soft critique of celebrity obsession. In Screaming, I trespass digitally into popular horror films such as The Shining and Alien, screaming at the monsters to scare them away or blow them to smithereens. Zombie Loop is a two-channel video in which projections on two opposing walls position the viewer in the center of a visual loop, wherein a gruesome zombie endlessly pursues a running survivor. On screen, I play both zombie and survivor.
Hollywood films and their fans also inspire my web-based artworks. Snow Stories is a data-driven story engine where visitors' written stories are translated into audio-visual stories culled rom a database of film clips; Me and Billy Bob documents an ongoing obsession with actor Billy Bob Thornton and sincerely participates in his online fan culture. Caitlin Jones, of Rhizome, wrote that my "work is distinct from many other artists also concerned with the cinematic. Not simply interested in issues of narrative, time, space, or the like, Mcdonald looks specifically at the genres romance and horror and how these constructions become a part of our own experiences" (Rhizome, Oct 8, 2007).
In public works, I engage an audience comprised of a very general public that is not necessarily expecting art or gathered in established arts venues. I interrupt the flow of daily public exchange, inviting strangers into momentary relationships. I engage with passersby as a means of orchestrating activities away from their usual context and my audience is made up of willing and chosen participants. Zombies in Condoland is an upcoming large-scale piece where passersby are invited to play a part in the spectacle of a horror film shoot: instantly cast as actors complete with makeup, costumes, lights, camera, and action scenes. In Horror Makeup, I apply makeup on a daily subway commute, transforming myself into a zombie rather than beautifying my face. With a base largely made up of strangers, I shampoo hair in a salon in Shampoo, offer free non-professional advice in Advice Lounge, radically transform clothing in Tailor Made, bring houseplants into private homes in House Plant, sew protective messages in participants' garments in Seams, and borrow personal objects for a month in Borrowed Things. Sylvie Fortin (Art Papers magazine, Sept / Oct 2005) writes of my practice, "relationships are her medium, fleeting encounters her material".
- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork
- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/press/kasprzak_transmedia.jpg
- link to gallery representing artist
http://csis.pace.edu/digitalgallery/index.html- curator
- artist website
http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/
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