Viewing room

Cracked Rib

Ally McIntyre

Jealous East

14 Nov 2019 — 24 Nov 2019

For her fourth solo exhibition with Jealous, Ally McIntyre explores earthly pleasures in ‘Cracked Rib’, a paradise we have created for ourselves. The exhibition centres around a new body of work, created in her native Canada, alongside a new screenprint edtition, created in Jealous Print Studios.

Puppies, deer and cats strut confidently across McIntyre’s new body of work, surrounded by fora and fauna in the peak of their beautiful existence, springing to life in bold colours. Alongside, others are somewhat expired, wilting against the strong blocks of colour assertively applied to the raw canvas. Others still are reduced to abstracted lines, the suggestion of form created through bold brushmarks, bouncing across the canvas as if created from a spring.

’Cracked Rib’ is an idea of finding paradise among chaos and destruction. I am interested in humanity’s inclination to create a paradise for themselves and find harmony in disorder. We know things right now are crap in the world and as a result, I have no desire as an artist to add more doom and gloom to it. It doesn’t help me anymore. If you really sit and take time with the bombardment of images, stories, news, ads, it can make you feel helpless and dizzy at the same time. This body of work is the antithesis of that- it came out of finding still moments, tucked around the corner, or in the back garden, such as watching a bee buzz by. I simply asked myself the question - what makes humans happy? What makes us happy? Perhaps it’s cliché, but I felt inspired by it. I have a lot of reference to the 90’s in the work. I grew up in the 90’s and had obsession with things like 101 Dalmatians, Pop Rocks candy, cartoon and animals. So that essence of my childhood came through as I made the work.

Ally McIntyre, 2019

A deeper look into the canvas reveals McIntyre’s secret language of layers. Peeking out from the vibrant colours a flash of text, a worm, a discarded sock. These cultural references give a sense of place, a glimpse of humanity, away from the constructed realities we create for ourselves.

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Ally McIntyre

Canadian Artist

After graduating in Painting and Sculpture from University of Alberta in 2013, Ally McIntyre completed the MA Fine Art course at the prestigious Goldsmiths University of London, where she was awarded the Jealous Prize 2014/2015 and HIX Award 2015. Her solo exhibitions at Jealous ‘Moondazed’ in 2015, ’Dog Days’ in 2016, ‘Decaf Honey’ in 2017 all of which proved sell-out successes with artworks placed in private collections around the world. Most recently, Ally was a finalist for the 20th anniversary Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Painting Competition in Canada.

Ally McIntyre’s work rebels against the constraints the art canon has imposed on painting. She reinvents her subjects through large dimensions, bright colours and an unconventional pairing of mixed media and styles. Bold and assertive, her work stands up to the prevalent association of large-scale art with the male artist. Confident brush strokes envelop glimpses of realism and dissolve faces into playful combinations of dream-like colour, line and glitter. Ally’s work is an amalgamation of various genres across history; faux-naive, realism, kitsch, expressionism, and cartoon. The subject and narrative of her work often has to do with the structure of hierarchy in culture, art, human-animal relations, and somehow circumventing or looking at it in a new way, that can place importance on a subject that may otherwise not be considered honourable or iconic.
Her work is placed in many public and private collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum Permanent Print Collection, where her Jealous Prize winning screenprint ‘Ferdinand’ joins the growing archive of Jealous Prize winner’s prints.