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Hollie Mackenzie
Born 1989
Lives and works in Ashford, Kent, UK.
www.mackenzieartist.co.uk
Hollie Mackenzie explores the notion of the impossible Utopia by creating her own version of
a dystopian landscape in the form of melting sculptures and installations, encouraging the
viewer to interpret this deviant reality and its proximity to the world we live in. By doing this her
aim is to provoke debate around the unattainable within our society.
Mackenzie’s current artistic project is a theoretical investigation into the deconstruction of
Phallogocentrism; in which she proposes to link Luce Irigaray’s ‘labial’ language of difference
to Gilles Deleuze's rhizome-thought to form a potential ‘labial/rhizomatic’ way of thinking in
critique of the Phallogocentric traditional image of thought. Mackenzie has taken this notion
of the traditional dogmatic thought-image to be one of masculine structures and the rhizome-
thought as feminist in its resistance to this fundamentally patriarchal thinking.

In conveying this utopian proposal through a theory of aesthetics, Mackenzie suggests it
could be the starting point for the emancipation of feminine ways and means of expression.
By merging together an artistic practice and a philosophy of art and aesthetics, she aims
to create both scholarly work and artistic encounters that convey this feminist philosophy of
‘labial’ art-politics in order to explore utopian ideals and change through artistic expression.

HOLLIE MACKENZIE graduated from the Arts University Bournemouth with a BA (Hons) Fine Art (2012) before
going on to study MA Political Theory and Practices of Resistance at the University of Kent at Canterbury
(2013). She has participated in a number of group exhibitions and exhibited two solo shows. She has also
been commissioned for two exhibitions: Encounter for the Life, Matter and Resistance conference at the
University of Kent, Canterbury (2013); and Obscurant for the Broomhill National Sculpture Prize 2014 at
Broomhill Sculpture Park in Barnstaple, North Devon (2014). In 2012 Mackenzie was awarded the Dorset
Visual Arts Award and The Signature Art Prize: People’s Choice Award for her sculpture, Downfall which
was also featured in The Sunday Times Style magazine as one of the favourites from The Affordable Art Fair
2012 exhibition in London. In 2013 she was featured in two art books: The State of Art: Sculpture and 3D Vol
1 and described in The Caitlin Art Guide as one of UK’s forty exciting emerging artists of 2013 (Hammond
2013). Since then: Mackenzie has won the Winter Pride UK Art Award 2014, the Broomhill National Sculpture
Prize 2014, again the Signature Art Prize: Peoples’ Choice Award and the Royal British Society of Sculptors
2014 Bursary Awards; was invited to present Labial Art-Politics at the University of Copenhagen for the
Critical Practices and Experimentation conference, and in What does aesthetics want from us and IR?
at the University of Warwick; has co-authored ‘A Labial Art-Politics’ with Dr Iain MacKenzie published in
Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest; and is currently studying a PhD scholarship in
Political and Social Thought at the University of Kent.

Right: Downfall, 2012, pine wood.
h: 340cm w: 270cm d: 110cm, Artist’s Collection.
Next page: Encounter, 2013, pine wood, varnish.
h: 106cm w: 200cm d: 60cm, Artist’s Collection.

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