Collective is delighted to present If you get the knees right the rest should follow, a new exhibition by Glasgow-based artist Holly McLean.

If you get the knees right the rest should follow uses film and collage to present a slice-of-life of Alice Vandeleur-Boorer, an artist, market-gardener and surfer. Holly and her camera follow Alice across different spaces in her life and we witness their intimacy, humour and raw, open, frankness.

This is the latest in Holly's series of film portraits focussing on fertility, reproduction and motherhood: aligning discoveries and discrepancies between science, nature and challenges to norms of representation. The developing suite of films – beginning with Saturnrania in 2019 - draw on aspects of science-fiction, anthropological film making, home movie-making and artist’s film and video.

Holly's collage practice uses a different visual and poetic form of storytelling to expand her ideas and uses a raw D.I.Y aesthetic to depict watery science-fiction galaxies that encapsulate birth, growth, miscarriage and child rearing in all their human and (and potential non-human) mess.

Read more about If you get the knees right the rest should follow in the information which accompanies the exhibition here. Large print version here. She surfs a sea of glue, an essay by Alison Scott responding to the exhibition, can be downloaded here.

Holly McLean (born 1989, London) lives and works in Glasgow. Recent exhibitions include; Visions in the Nunnery P1 (Bow Arts, London) and Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2019. Saturnrania (2019) was selected for and produced through the BBC/LUX Now & Next programme. Her work has screened at film festivals at centres in London, Kassel, Leeds, Glasgow, Albuquerque and Berlin.

Satellites Programme is Collective’s development programme for emergent artists and producers based in Scotland. Satellites aims to support practitioners at a pivotal, emergent point in their careers through a critical programme of retreats, workshops, studio visits and group discussions, public exhibitions, events and publishing. Artists are selected from an open submission by a new panel each year. The 2020 participants are Alison Scott, Kirsty Hendry, Sulaïman Majali, Holly McLean and Becky Šik.

Image Caption

Holly McLean, If You Get The Knees Right The Rest Will Follow, 2020 (still), courtesy of the artist.

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