March 5 - 11, 2019

SPRING/BREAK Art Show - New York, NY

Shona McAndrew - ‘Sometime Last Night’

 
 

PRESS RELASE

Shona McAndrew's painted papier-mâché sculptures, digital collages and paintings depict women in quiet private moments.  Often life-size or slightly larger, her sculptures draw from personal experience and observation to call attention to the simultaneous banality and importance of fleeting, introspective, honest and vulnerable moments. Informed by her experiences as a plus size woman, of body-dysmorphia and struggles with societal expectations of womanhood, McAndrew imagines these figures as friends, allies and self portraits in states of reveal in an unbroken stream of daydreams. Unembarrassed by their often exposed bodies and seemingly unaware and unconcerned about the viewer's careless voyeurism, Shona’s women ask us to valorize activities of body exploration, self care and forgetting to see oneself through the critical eyes of others.

For this project, McAndrew installed a site-specific room-size installation, featuring life-size paper mache sculptures of McAndrew and her partner casually lying in bed.  The rest of the room is filled with similarly painted sculptures apparently drawn directly from McAndrew’s bedroom. As her partner passively stares into space, McAndrew’s sculptural self-portrait plays with his flaccid penis.  By placing herself within the context of the reclining nude, McAndrew activates the historically passive female form, catching herself mid-play with limp male genitalia. The room feels like a memory, every object and sculpture tinged with McAndrew’s surface, texture and aesthetic.

Born and raised in Paris, France, Shona McAndrew moved to the US to get her Bachelors degree in Psychology and Fine Arts at Brandeis University. She furthered her studies with a Masters in Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. McAndrew has exhibited her work across the US (New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Providence, LA). Both Shona and her work have been featured in the Huffington Post, CNN, ID Magazine, Bustle, Vice, Playboy, Whitehot Magazine and many more.  She lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.