Rachel Maclean’s Wot u :-) about? exhibition displayed at Tate Britain

Since the 15th November 2016, Glasgow-based multi-media artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean’s work Wot u :-) about? has been on display at Tate Britain as part of their Art Now series. The free exhibition which consists of several prints and a film explores and critiques the behaviours of society, focusing specifically on their every-growing dependency on social media and the internet and what life would be like without it.

Maclean’s thirty-minute film ‘It’s What’s Inside That Counts 2016’ combines social media, fairy tales and children’s programmes to highlight the ways in which media companies and social media corporations use selective imagery to manipulate consumers and affect their day-to-day thinking.

The unusual but intriguing film, in which according to the Tate Britain website, Maclean plays all the characters herself and “uses green-screen backdrops to create sinister animated environments”, centres around a strange yellow celebrity-like figure who is the embodiment of data. She is the sole distributor of data to crowds of desperate zombie-like people until her system is hacked and data is no longer available, leading to endless chants of ‘We Want Data!’ and a complete breakdown in society.

This fantastic eye-opening feature really focuses in on the theme of dependence and how if there came a time when people didn’t have access to the internet or social media, there would be chaos and people wouldn’t know what to do.

The highly-colourful exhibition also features several prints portraying of characters featured in this film. One display in particular, depicts the celebrity-like figure who metaphorically controls data usage, lying on the floor with one of the zombie-like people standing on top of her holding a sign stating the words ‘We Want Data!’. Surrounding the two, are the rabbit-faced hackers chewing at her cables, attempting to steal her data.

Whilst the image is constructed in a fun and light-hearted manner, it captures Maclean’s main message of societies’ problem with online dependency through the desperation her characters feel to get their data back when it’s unavailable.

This contemporary outlandish style of work is not usual for Maclean as the BBC Arts website states, she uses photography and videography to “delve into politics, society and identity’. Whilst Wot u :-) about? covers a worldwide, cross-generation issue, it really focuses in on the younger generation and explores both their dependency on technology and the effect social media and the media in general, has on them growing up. This is a rarely covered, but innovative concept to see at Tate Britain.

As the Tate Britain websites states, the galleries’ Art Now series focuses on “new work by emerging artists...and provides a platform for... established figures in the British and international art scene”. Whilst this brilliant long-running initiative highlights both historical art, contemporary artists like Rachel Maclean are also given a platform, which is something that is hopefully seen more often in the future.

The piece, which the Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke describes as “garish and repulsive”, is being viewed with mixed reactions with some stating it is confusing, whilst others enjoying Maclean’s creativity and individualism. The Social Hub caught up some of these visitors to get their reactions in an audio package linked below.

The exhibition at Tate Britain runs until 9th April 2017.

-Jade Kidd