Rachel Maclean

Rachel Maclean is an established artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow whose films have shown widely in the UK and internationally in galleries, museums, film festivals and on television.

Maclean’s films captivate audiences with elaborately produced digital worlds, extravagant costumes, and colourful alternative realities. She draws on pop-cultural references, video games, fairy tales, and horror to critically examine social contexts, political systems, consumerism, and phenomena of the digital world. Her feature-length film Make Me Up, originally commissioned by the BBC, premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and went on to screen in numerous film festivals including Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Her recent animated short upside mimi was selected for Fantasia Film festival, BFI London Film Festival, London Short Film Festival and Mecal Film Festival. Maclean has received significant acclaim with solo shows at Tate Britain and The National Gallery, London, and she represented Scotland at the 2017 Venice Biennale with her film Spite Your Face. Her work A Whole New World (2014) won the prestigious Margaret Tate 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. She has also worked on a number of TV commissions including Billy Connolly: Portrait of the Lifetime (2017) for BBC 1 and Rachel Maclean:The Shopping Centre, Artist in Residence (2018) for Channel 4.