PIERMARQ* Projects is pleased to present: Chimera, a new body of figurative paintings exploring the strangeness of bodily experience and the instability of self-image by Sydney based artist, Rachel Mackay. The works are based on photographic self-portraits taken through warped mirrors, translating distortion, gesture and reflection into painted form. Mackay investigates the body as mutable and porous—constantly shifting between image and material, surface and depth. The paintings expand on the themes of her ongoing multidisciplinary practice, which spans painting, video and sculpture.
Referencing the mythological chimera—a hybrid creature composed of incongruous parts—the exhibition considers the self as fragmented, composite, and continually reassembled. Mackay’s figures do not aim for resolution or realism; they flicker between forms, resisting containment and embracing contradiction. Chimera continues Mackay's broader interest in feminist and psychoanalytic ideas of bodily transformation, mirroring and multiplicity.
Mackay earned a Masters of Fine Art from the National Art School in Sydney.