Megan Queenan (She/Her)
Megan Queenan (b.1998, Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish artist who creates conceptual installation-based artwork. Her current practice has emerged from her recent education at The Glasgow School of Art.
The work reflects the artist’s personal interests in sci-fi, horror, vintage technology, human psychology, nostalgia, and the phenomenon of death denial. Queenan is interested in the impossible conversations of the everyday and the way the human brain conflates the unexplained with the paranormal- specifically technological anomalies.
Crafting sculptural pieces and incorporating unconventional methods of printmaking, she creates motifs of so-called “defunct” devices- a modern-day memento mori of forgotten technology and the passage of time. The artist primarily incorporates casted objects which, through the process of recontextualising materials, have stripped the older devices they are sourced from of any remaining functionality they once had. These are shown in contrast alongside functioning mechanics which often interact with these lifeless models creating arbitrary networks and secret, non-descript, conversations.
Queenan aims to change the ways in which we talk about and perceive death within our own individual communities, shifting the narrative of death as something to vanquish, and instead embracing its presence in our lives and to consider how the digital imprints (ghosts) of ourselves that we leave behind will be handled posthumously.
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Contact
Remnant
The images featured depict the piece within its originally intended context; I had aimed to situate the work in a physical space, adjacent to an accompanying circuit, which would utilize a GSM module to receive inbound text messages from the viewer and “respond” to them via a flashing strip of LED lights that would encircle the sculpture atop a plinth.
Regrettably, due to COVID restrictions, this dynamic physical interaction could not become fully realised and issues of global SMS costs and mobile reception dampened the alternative of digital participation via livestream. The fully realised piece will now feature in future exhibitions as the course of my work begins to more closely examine the role of an heirloom and scrutinize the objects we bestow inherent value upon within a class-based context.
Late Night Conversations
Late Night Conversations is intended to feature on opposite walls from one another, a conversation taking place in silence and across physical space between two states of being. The viewer is fully present between the two speakers, and yet is simultaneously situated out width of the conversation that is transpiring, as the two converse exclusively between one another.
Transcendence
Footage of the project Transcendence in situ.
Ectoplasm
Departure
Footage of the project Departure in situ.
S.A.0nce
Please be warned: this short film contains short periods of flashing lights at random intervals.
S.A.0nce was originally intended as an interactive website operating under the false pretence of a live séance from home, the audience would be able to watch the, in fact, pre-recorded séance together via a livestream and chat amongst each other in real time within the chatroom provided throughout the course of the event.
Stripped back from its intended outcome however, S.A.0nce ties together the individual projects featured in the artist’s graduate showcase and provides insight into our innate ability to attribute so-called inexplicable technological anomaly with the paranormal whilst maintaining its original tongue and cheek outlook on the instances we all experience; lights flickering unexpectedly, strange noises emanating from your car radio at 3am- the voice you swear you heard in the static, the odd blur in the photo you took that was certainly not there when you took the image, and the snapchat filter on your phone that refuses to stay on your face and instead gravitates towards that eerie space behind you.