Calder MacKay

Calder MacKay (b. 2002) is a Scottish artist, currently based in London. Graduating with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, MacKay’s painting practice attempts to unpick the relentless hum of living today. A condition shaped by overstimulation, digital mediation and the quiet alienation of contemporary life. Working from found archival and digital imagery, he pulls fragments of the past into dialogue with the anxieties and absurdities of the present. Through exaggerated saturation, distortion and overexposure, familiar scenes become heightened and uncanny. Painting through shifting layers, he builds upon this feeling of unease.

Digitally warping this pantomime of reality, where colossal limbs are cooking beneath the fluorescent bulbs of today. At its core, the work is driven by a desire to resist emotional detachment and passive spectatorship. He uses the archive not as a call to return to the past, but to question what we’ve replaced it with. His work reflects on the tension of a generation suspended between cynicism and hope. Yet during these times of uncertainty there is a quiet reshuffling, and while the roof collapses, nostalgia holds us together.