Anna McCarthy
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2023
1981
United Kingdom
Sperling
The Oyster Dance...in which a naked woman danced alone on a small stage to the sound of a piano. The best of them was Olivia, the Oyster Dancer, who placed a raw oyster on her forehead, leant back and let it slide down her body without ever falling off. The oyster crisscrossed her torso right down to her forefoot, from which she would kick it up into the air, catch it on her forehead, and begin the process anew.
The central theme of the booth is the psychological impact of the global climate crisis on both a personal and collective level, coupled with a trauma-coping-strategy that casts light on a seemingly hopeless situation.
As in previous works, Anna McCarthy stresses the inseparability between the private and political by using an everyday image to describe the bigger picture: A shiny soap dispenser containing – on closer inspection – various drowning insects in the electric pink gel-like soap, which is typically supposed to connote cleanliness and health, has become the aggressor, suffocating its ...
Wash Cycle Phase II, Pencil on Paper, 21 × 30 cm, 2023
Anna McCarthy, Washing Cycle, 2022, at Sperling, Munich, photo: Sebastian Kissel
Anna McCarthy’s (*1981) work oscillates between genres. She constantly seeks new forms to express topics that have collective relevancy as well as personal urgency. Her work is quick and dirty, improvised, and raw, charged with personal experience as a reflection of wider topics. Her sharp intellect and wit challenge the status quo, always laughing, together with the viewer, in the face of fear. Her methods of production mirror the content – cheap materials, reusables, always in flux. She possesses a talent to astutely comment societal ongoings in a poetic and profound way, subtly dismantling power constructs as she goes. Her work is a modern-day amalgam of multi-layered readings that take the viewer into a narration that weaves in and out of thought patterns building revolutionary spaces to revel in.