Myfanwy MacLeod Collaboration Residency

Since the mid-1990s, the Vancouver-based artist Myfanwy MacLeod has become widely known for making art that traverses the boundaries that define high culture and mass entertainment in a satirical investigation of social power. Hinging on linguistic slippages and unexpected flashes of recognition, she uncovers new meanings and points of intersection within iconic episodes in popular culture and the history of modern art. Simultaneously amusing and troubling, her work has, for example, used overt references to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, incorporated sculptural motifs from the 1968 British musical film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and included origami sculptures from images of the murdered Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten.

Stack is a print based installation printed at Malaspina for her solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2014, in which the sexually charged music of Led Zeppelin is a key reference. These include Ramble On, a 1977 Chevrolet Camaro that has been stripped of much of its bodywork and engine and hangs on a rotisserie stand, a bit like a beast in the process of being roasted, and Stack, a large-scale wall-mounted work that resembles the wall of Marshall speaker cabinets used by Led Zeppelin to produce heavily amplified sound for their stadium concerts.

Special thanks to Malaspina printmaker Matt Parisien and Vancouver Art Gallery curator Grant Arnold.