Piggyback
Nancy Anne McPhee
Plate Glass Gallery
Piggyback is a black and white image of a zebra clinging to a giraffe’s back. The image uses the distinct patterns of these animals on a striped background to create an image that is playful and surreal. This work uses stripes, pattern, illusion and sheen to create an experiential situation for the viewer where the optical field is enveloping and active.
Nancy Anne McPhee‘s art practice is concerned with sight, unsettling the eye, and creating restrained images with stripes and tone-on-tone. These mediums ask something of the viewers, to reposition themselves in order for the image to become visible or to generally participate in a more active viewing process. Stripes create an effect that can appear as movement or a kind of visual buzz and thus the activation of the work is exerted onto the viewer. Common themes that run throughout the work are disparities in representation and creating an immersive atmosphere.
