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Tori McLean

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Print as Play… Print as Provocation

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The curious and persistent questions of childhood - Why? What if? Can I? Should I? - form the foundation of Tori McLean’s interdisciplinary practice. Working across print, sculpture, and installation, she channels this spirit of enquiry into a conceptually led and research-driven investigation of how value, both personal and cultural, is shaped, constructed, and felt.  

Rooted in material curiosity and process experimentation, McLean draws on the language of childhood play - the tactility of toys, the joy of invention, and the instinct to question everything - to create works that invite viewer participation.  Playfulness and nostalgia become disarming entry points into psychologically and emotionally layered ideas. This tension transforms print from a passive medium into an active, participatory encounter - one that encourages viewers to slow down, look closer, and reflect more deeply on their assumptions and emotional responses.

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Her automaton series, embodying the archetypes of Maiden, Mother, and Crone, exemplifies this strategy. Each kinetic figure invites interaction through a crank handle, activating movement, music, and metaphor. Viewers become complicit in the performance, exposing power dynamics between observer and object, and prompting reflection on societal expectations around gender, control, and worth.

Positioned at the intersection of thinking and making, McLean takes an expanded view of printmaking, treating it as a conceptual collaborator.  Blurring lines between art and craft, print and sculpture, she reimagines print not merely as a method of reproduction, but as object, experience, and encounter. 

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Language is central to her work, with words used as tools to examine how language can liberate or limit, define or destabilise. In How Many Words Does it Take?, McLean mimics childhood stacking toys to construct an interlocking sculpture engraved with misogynistic slurs and stereotypes collected from women.  The form expresses an “architecture of harm” revealing how language - though often dismissed as fleeting - becomes foundational, entrenched, and psychologically enduring. The work invites viewers to consider how systems of control are embedded not only in culture but in the language of everyday life.

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McLean works with materials such as wood, paper, textile, acrylic, and metal, selecting those best suited to her conceptual aims. Often crossing between analogue and digital processes, she embraces variation and transformation, using shifts to explore the dialogue between intention and accident, perfection and imperfection.

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Ultimately, McLean’s practice is grounded in feminist critique and lived, gendered experience, exploring the often unspoken forces that shape female identity. Through this lens, she creates spaces of quiet resistance, playful provocation, and thoughtful disruption. Rather than offering resolutions, her work invites reflection - encouraging viewers to engage with the curiosity of a child: open, unafraid, and ready to ask why.

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