Sammi McLean investigates sculpture, photography and collage through a printmaker’s lens. With an aim to push the boundaries of traditional printmaking, McLean’s work explores laser cutting technology in order to treat an etched plate as a reproducible, sculptural object. As a printmaker, her practice aligns with those who reveal their process as part of their work. Plates are often treated as objects in installations, making space to witness the dimensional textures from which an image was pulled - like a sophisticated rubbing. In this way, plates and prints function as ready metaphors for fragmented relationships which separate in two, and infinitely call back to one another in order to seek location.
Embracing chance, imagery is often fragmented, layered and collaged to create misrepresentations of information which oscillate between memories and documented experiences. Assuming there is some hidden pattern or code to unmask in our experiences, McLean often relies on her gut to guide her. Working intuitively, her practice feels akin to the lost art of navigating from the stars in lieu of a roadmap.
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