Rachel Maclean

Rachel Maclean (born 1987) is a Scottish visual artist and filmmaker.

She lives and works in Glasgow.

Her films have shown widely in galleries, museums, film festivals, and on television. She has screened work at numerous festivals in the UK and internationally, including Rotterdam International Film Festival, Ars Electronica, Fantastic Fest, Mecal Pro, Fantasia Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival. She has received significant acclaim with solo shows at Tate Britain and The National Gallery, London, and represented Scotland at the 2017 Venice Biennale with her film Spite Your Face. Her work A Whole New World (2014) won the Margaret Tait Award in 2013. She has twice been shortlisted for the Jarman Award, and achieved widespread critical praise for Feed Me at the British Art Show in 2016.

Maclean is also a NUAcT Research Fellow at Newcastle University.

Early life and education Maclean was born in Edinburgh.

She has a BA in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art.

Career Maclean was selected to represent Scotland in Venice at the 57th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, 2017. This solo presentation of new work centred on a major new film commission. The work was based on the story of Pinocchio. The presentation is commissioned and curated by Alchemy Film & Arts in partnership with Talbot Rice Gallery and the University of Edinburgh.

Maclean uses a lot of green screen in both her video and 2D prints to compile images. Wearing colourful costumes and make-up, Maclean often takes on every role in her films herself. She uses computer technology to generate her locations, and borrows audio from television and cinema to construct narratives with a comedic touch.

Maclean's artwork is both seductive and disturbing, it sucks the viewer into oversaturated candy coloured worlds and repels them with unsettling themes and narratives. She explores issues of identity, class, nationalism and gender, whilst referencing narrative structures from pop culture and fairy-tales.

Some of Maclean's work explores ideas of Scottish identity. Her work The Lion and the Unicorn (2012), for example, was made in response to the election of the SNP in 2011, and the referendum that was on the horizon. She wanted to explore "a romantic vision of Scottishness, and how we reconcile that with a real lived experience of Scottishness, and what relationship that has in Scottish Nationalism and also with Unionism". Kunstarkaden Munich Awards YearAwardWorkResultRef.2013Margaret Tait AwardFor her contribution to Glasgow Film FestivalWon Film London Jarman AwardNominated Film London Jarman AwardNominated Prix Ars ElectronicaDUCK (2024)Honorary MentionInternational Federation of Film Critics Award (FIPRESCI)Make Me Up (2018)Won