It's What's Inside That Counts

Simultaneously sumptuous and gorgeous, garish and grim, this is a re-working of Pinocchio for the neo-liberal era. Rachel Maclean’s dark fairytale, which represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale 2017, depicts a brash and baroque binary world of poverty and riches where the prospect of easy wealth tempts even good boys like Pic into bad ways. But if everyone believes the lie, what’s the problem?

Artist in Residence follows some of the UK's leading artists who spend time in various locations, producing new work in response to what they find.

Siri wakes to find herself trapped inside a brutalist candy-coloured dreamhouse. Despite the cutesy decor, the place is far from benign, and she and her inmates are encouraged to compete for survival while being watched over by surveillance cameras, 24/7. Presiding over the group is an authoritarian diva who speaks entirely with the voice of Kenneth Clark from the 1960s BBC series Civilisation. As she forces the women to go head-to-head in a series of demeaning tasks, Siri, with the help of fellow inmate Alexa, starts subverting the rules and soon reveals the sinister truth that underpins their world.

Sean Connery's descent into hell after witnessing Marilyn Monroe's return from the dead...

“The Lion and The Unicorn” is a short film inspired by the heraldic symbols found on the Royal Coat of Arms of The United Kingdom, the lion (representing England) and the unicorn (representing Scotland). The piece uses representations of both alliance and opposition to explore national identity within the context of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.

Feed Me is a larger than life fairy tale, part TV talent show, part thriller, video game in which Maclean plays all the parts

A multi-character, 8-channel film sits in the centre of the exhibition. Each character, from a porcine union-jack doting politician to a phone-addicted white cat, stand in as an archetype in the UK’s political landscape as it considers its exit from the European Union. Set apart on independent monitors, these anthropomorphized incarnations menace one another through tacit acts of ridicule in a perpetually cycling theatre, falling between farcical and cruel. Maclean points us to the mechanisms of belonging and nativeness at play in the performance of national identity.

In Germs, female stereotypes, pseudoscience and promised happiness clash with violent consequences.

Dr Cute is a video lecture from an off-brand Care Bear Professor of Sweet and Sinister Studies. A rational dissertation on the nature of cuteness is quickly unhinged by the intense emotional responses the subject elicits, begging the question: what happens when something is too cute?

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

A supersaturated satire with a look into the land of data-addicted monk-like figures and dance-crazed rabbits.

I’m Terribly Sorry, a VR work by the artist, will be screened in the backroom and is the artist’s first piece in this medium. Similarly set in a dystopian urban British landscape of manic tourism, I’m Terribly Sorry reflects the desire for constant documentation and performance of the self. The interactive virtual reality piece, like Native Animals, deals with the divisive campaigns of the UK government leading up the Brexit vote, focusing on how these social realities construct new subjects for the 21st century.

Rachel Maclean’s bright, emoji-feminist fairy tale-style touches a new darkness in her first completely animated short.

Inspired by the Technicolor utopias of children's television, Over The Rainbow invites the viewer into a shape-shifting world inhabited by cuddly monsters, faceless clones and gruesome pop divas. Shot entirely using green-screen the film presents a synthetic environment, part toy model, part computer generated landscape, which explores a dark, comedic parody of the Faustian tale, video game and horror movie genres.

Sophie goes on a killing spree in a candy-coloured world.

With Britney Spears in the news again with her new memoir, we jump back in time to the days of her infamous head-shaving shenanigans. Hit Me Baby is the earliest of Maclean's work included in either programme, but it already shows an interest in dissecting pop culture's cannibalistic desire to both exploit and destroy the means by which it sustains itself – often women.