Abstract

McKenzie was selected as one of 26 artists covering a period from 1963 to 2008, who had won a prize at the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition (himself having won a prize in the 2004 exhibition.) McKenzie exhibited two new large paintings, and was also selected as one of the three artists to have their original prize winning work featured as a double spread within the exhibition publication. The two paintings exhibited were entitled ‘A Visit to Bad EM’s’ and ‘ A Visit to Belleville’. They were part of a larger body of work which addressed painting’s relationship to our image-saturated world, and through which McKenzie investigated the implications of new media on the working processes of the contemporary painter. Such a process in the lead-up to the paintings utilsed photography, film and the internet as artist’s materials. The paintings further sought to address the inherent separation between the image illuminated on-screen and that painted onto canvas. The conflict between these means of image communication McKenzie regards as a rich area of exploration in his work. The two paintings in this exhibition referenced diverse historical and image sources, ranging from a Woody Allen film to Belfast Zoo, in a re-interpretation of events connected to the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune of 1871. The exhibition had wide-spread media coverage in South Korea, and allowed McKenzie’s work to be viewed in a new international context.