Biography
Visual Artist | Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
Originally from South Africa, Abigayle McLean is a visual artist based in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Design at the Eastern Institute of Technology in 2015, and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts from Whitecliffe College of Arts in 2020.
Abigayle’s practice is deeply intimate and psychological, exploring obscure states of human existence - both physical and emotional. Drawing from personal experiences and her relationships with others, her work brings unconscious darkness into form. Through visceral representations of the psyche and body often her own - she examines themes of embodiment, mental health, individuation, and death.
Working across photography, painting, sculpture, and film, her interdisciplinary approach invites the subconscious to surface. Each medium becomes a vessel for inner narratives to unfold, blurring the lines between internal and external, real and imagined.
Her latest body of work occupies a liminal space between the real and the mythic, exploring evolutionary theories of origin, creation, and mortality.
EDUCATION
2018 – 2020 Master in Fine Arts, Whitecliffe College of Arts, Auckland New Zealand
2013- 2015 Bachelor in Visual Arts and Design with Honors, IDEAschool at Eastern Institute of Technology, Taradale New Zealand
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2020 Final MFA Graduate Show, Auckland, New Zealand, Whitecliffe College of Arts Gallery
2019 Materiality, Auckland, New Zealand, DEMO Gallery
2019 What Remains, Auckland, New Zealand, DEMO Gallery
2018 MFA Introduction Show, Auckland, New Zealand, Whitecliffe College of Arts Gallery
2015: Feast for the Senses, Graduate Exhibition, Napier, New Zealand, Creative Arts Napier, Community Art Centre
2014: Traces, Taradale, New Zealand, IDEAschool, Eastern Institute of Technology
2014 Drawing: 2014, Taradale, New Zealand, IDEAschool, Eastern Institute of Technology
2013 Emergence, Taradale, New Zealand, IDEAschool, Eastern Institute of Technology