Lovely to Look At

J McLaughlin

January 23 to February 21, 2009

Beauty secrets of long-dead starlets. Your Poems Set to Music. Suddenly Something Lovely. Drink me. Exquisite. Only the Best. Everything you ever wanted. For Your Pleasure. There is no such thing as a happy accident.

Lovely to Look At marks McLaughlin’s return to the medium of painting after a five-year hiatus, exposing the artist’s ongoing obsessions privileging message over medium. A self-described “Font Queen,” McLaughlin is compelled by the abstract and occult qualities and the fading power of nostalgia to be found in the castoff pseudo-functional signage of consumer society.

Literally and figuratively scraping away surface information to reveal the layers of meaning underneath, McLaughlin pushes her aesthetic source materials to reposition their textual content (“All we need is Love,” “Don’t Be Normal”) and short-circuit their “power” as aphorisms.

Employing a wide range of mediums within an interdisciplinary practice, J McLaughlin is known primarily for her collaborative and performance work. She received her BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1997. This is McLaughlin’s third solo exhibition with Deluge Contemporary Art, following Three Nails and a Hammer (1994) and A Prize in Every Package (1997).