Emma McLellan

Emma McLellan

Emma McLellan studied at Elam and has a Masters in Fine Arts painting, with an undergraduate degree majoring in printmaking.

Emma is currently the Studio Programme Leader of the BVA degree, Manukau Institute School of Visual Arts, and lectures in printmaking.

Her practice is a combination of painting and screen printing allowing her to build multiple layers of colour, pattern and image. Through this process Emma is able to disclose selected information, the viewer only seeing in part underlying motifs. The themes in her work include theories of desire, genetic engineering and investigating surface pattern in print.

McLellan’s use of repetition draws an allusion on one level to print metaphors (replica, edition, copy) and at a deeper level to the concept of mutation and its introduction of newness, difference and diversity into a genetic pool – a concept that is often viewed in a negative light and which has lead to the pejorative connotations of the term ‘mutant’. It is this idea of difference that is both socially unacceptable yet culturally fascinating and McLellan holds up her grotesque and hybridised animals for inspection in the same manner as one would inspect a museum oddity.

Emma has an Auckland based studio. her work has been exhibited as far afield as France, Canada, Spain and Bulgaria.

 

Examples of Emma’s work can be viewed at Mobile Art Gallery in Mt Eden.