The Tenant is a monographic critical essay by Marie Canet. It is the first text to directly address the connections between McKenzie's work, pornography, and special effects.
The title refers to the way the artist moves through different periods and aesthetic spaces, appropriating their codes in order to construct new visual fictions. The book is infused with post-#MeToo feminist thinking, alternative uses of biography, reflections on the art world, and contemporary debates surrounding appropriation, embodiment, and the status of the artwork.
Marie Canet is a French art critic, independent curator and professor of aesthetics.
Lucy McKenzie was born in 1977 in Glasgow (Scotland). She lives and works in Brussels. She studied at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee (Scotland), then specialised in trompe-l'œil at the Institut Supérieur de Peinture Van der Kelen Logelain in Brussels (Belgium). There she learned the foundations of decorative painting: preparation of surfaces, imitation of natural materials like marble and wood, and the play of ornamental illusion.
The artist works in the wider field of painting—often figurative and conceptual. Her appropriation practice aims to establish dialogue between seemingly antagonistic techniques and forms of knowledge, and to highlight the distinctiveness of these forms—be they from the realms of technique (traditional and contemporary), design, sculpture, underground cultures, or mass media.
See also
Atelier E.B (Beca Lipscombe & Lucy McKenzie).
