Jillian McDonald,Valley of the Deer, 2013, 3 screen, HD video with sound created in collaboration with Knocker (aka Dave Roberts), 16 minutes
Supported by Glenfiddich International Artist Residency
Jillian McDonald
Jillian McDonald's work incorporates video and performance, examining popular film genres such as romance and horror in relation to their effect on audiences.
Valley of the Deer (2013) is a specially adapted three-channel work for The Big M, shot on location in the Scottish highlands during an artist residency at the Glenfiddich Distillery in 2012-2013. The work features forty residents of Dufftown, Banffshire (Northern Scotland), either craftspeople or employees at the distillery, and was produced in response to the local landscape, traditional highland dress and music, oral folklore and pagan legends - both real and imagined. The haunting romanticism of the landscape figures prominently as the camera creeps through mossy glens, barley fields, heathered mountains, fairy knolls and abandoned stone houses - uncovering fog, rainbows, water sources, majestic views, woodland creatures, animated avatars, and ghostly figures. This valley has many tales.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jillian McDonald is a Canadian artist living in Brooklyn. Since 2006 she has watched an unhealthy amount of horror films.
Recent solo shows and projects include Moti Hasson Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents in New York; The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Rosenthal Gallery in San Francisco; Hallwalls in Buffalo; vertexList Gallery in Brooklyn; La Sala Narañja in Valencia, Spain. Her work has been included in group exhibitions and festivals at The Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany, MMOCA in Wisconsin, The Whitney Museum's Artport, Year Zero One in Toronto, The Sundance Film Festival in Utah, The Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, La Biennale de Montréal, ISEA in Estonia, and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France.
McDonald has received grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Canada Council for the Arts, Soil New Media, Turbulence.org, The Verizon Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, The Experimental Television Center, and Pace University. She lectures regularly about her work and has attended numerous residencies including The Headlands Center for the Arts in California, Lilith Performance Studio in Sweden, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Program in New York, The Western Front in Vancouver, and The Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta.In 2012 she represented Canada at the Glenfiddich international residency in Dufftown, Scotland.
McDonald's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Border Crossings, and The Village Voice, among others. A discussion of her work appears in several books including Better Off Dead, edited by Sarah Juliet Lauro,and Stalking by Bran Nicol.
Valley of the Deer (2013) is a specially adapted three-channel work for The Big M, shot on location in the Scottish highlands during an artist residency at the Glenfiddich Distillery in 2012-2013. The work features forty residents of Dufftown, Banffshire (Northern Scotland), either craftspeople or employees at the distillery, and was produced in response to the local landscape, traditional highland dress and music, oral folklore and pagan legends - both real and imagined. The haunting romanticism of the landscape figures prominently as the camera creeps through mossy glens, barley fields, heathered mountains, fairy knolls and abandoned stone houses - uncovering fog, rainbows, water sources, majestic views, woodland creatures, animated avatars, and ghostly figures. This valley has many tales.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jillian McDonald is a Canadian artist living in Brooklyn. Since 2006 she has watched an unhealthy amount of horror films.
Recent solo shows and projects include Moti Hasson Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents in New York; The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Rosenthal Gallery in San Francisco; Hallwalls in Buffalo; vertexList Gallery in Brooklyn; La Sala Narañja in Valencia, Spain. Her work has been included in group exhibitions and festivals at The Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany, MMOCA in Wisconsin, The Whitney Museum's Artport, Year Zero One in Toronto, The Sundance Film Festival in Utah, The Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, La Biennale de Montréal, ISEA in Estonia, and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France.
McDonald has received grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Canada Council for the Arts, Soil New Media, Turbulence.org, The Verizon Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, The Experimental Television Center, and Pace University. She lectures regularly about her work and has attended numerous residencies including The Headlands Center for the Arts in California, Lilith Performance Studio in Sweden, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Program in New York, The Western Front in Vancouver, and The Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta.In 2012 she represented Canada at the Glenfiddich international residency in Dufftown, Scotland.
McDonald's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Border Crossings, and The Village Voice, among others. A discussion of her work appears in several books including Better Off Dead, edited by Sarah Juliet Lauro,and Stalking by Bran Nicol.