Claire Mackenzie

I’m Claire Mackenzie, a graduating artist from The Glasgow School of Art, working across painting, installation and material experimentation. My practice explores technological paranoia and the hidden systems that command contemporary environments. By using expanded painting, I construct fragmented architectural spaces that are influenced by diagrams, industrial infrastructure, digital interfaces and surveillance systems.

I am interested in the ways that contemporary technological systems organise movement and behaviour. These systems operate quietly, using optimisation and a watchful eye as covert control. Research into media theory, network culture and surveillance capitalism has informed my understanding of how these systems affect perception and spatial experience.

My work combines large-scale painting with reflective, transparent and industrial materials, including glass, layered surfaces and screen-like structures. I create environments that are seemingly controlled and navigable however they remain psychologically restrictive and difficult to fully locate within. I do this using fragmentation, layering and unstable perspective. I am particularly interested in the tension between visibility and obstruction, using surfaces to reveal and conceal information simultaneously.

My process begins through digital construction and collage which I reference when moving into painting and material experimentation. I create a tension between controlled planning, and stencils with more intuitive image-making that allows painterly marks and distortions that function almost like malfunctions within the structure of the work.

As I move beyond graduation, I am increasingly interested in developing painting spatially through installation, using transparency and reflective materials to create immersive environments that challenge fixed perspectives and stable ways of viewing.