Glass, copper foil, solder, cast aluminium, copper wire armature, animation, 2024
Let the Bee’s Sting Slip (Laisser glisser le dard de l’abeille) continues Adair Mckenzie’s exploration of three-dimensional stained glass and incorporates an aluminum carrot hand-cast during a residency in Banff for her exhibition Private Life, in which she considered the recent accelerated flows between public and private space as experienced through the digital interface. Her sculptural language plays with the tensions within technology, digital interfaces, and desire. In this piece, she uses the glass grid as an extracted digital wireframe and creates a real-world object, existing as both form and lighting effect. By the carrot or by the stick.
Frances Adair Mckenzie is a visual artist and animator based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. In her work, she negotiates formal and speculative investigations into concepts of materiality, staging, and form, always in deference to process as hands-on manipulation of real materials and objects, through sculpture, installation, and the interfaces of digital technology.
Adair Mckenzie’s video work has been widely exhibited internationally, notably at the Somerset House (London), the MAXXI Museum (Rome), and IT and the TOKAS residency (Tokyo). In Canada, her work has been shown at Towards Gallery (Toronto) and Fonderie Darling, Centre Clark, and the Satosphere (Montréal). Two animations and a stopmotion virtual reality piece have been produced by the National Film Board. Her VR piece was nominated for a Prix Gémeaux in Québec and won a Canadian Screen Award for best immersive fiction. She was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2024.