Los Amantes (light box, metal, flowers) 

Working within the parameters of a salvaged advertising lightbox, Mackenzie debuts her first autobiographical work for ‘Off Season 2026’ at Big Shot, with a special collaboration with floral artist, Ultramarine flowers.

 

A figurative Margate summer memory takes up the illuminated window, which emulates a colourfield painting. The memory is perhaps censored as a private moment, or maybe distorted by time, evoking only a feeling for the audience to bask in.

 

Over the top, a kind of protective skin wraps around the light. Linear motifs from travels, amalgamated with tarot card symbols, provide another surface to unpick. A story once told, now where fact and fiction blurs.

 

Weaving in between the metalwork, Ultramarine flowers adds an extra reading. The use of flowers such as ‘’amaranthus caudatus’, fondly nic-named ‘love-lies-bleeding’, wrap, spread and constrict with optimism; left to the passage of time to gently age.

 

Layers of meaning from language/etymology, motifs and organic matter can be read back and forth between softness and hardness, balancing abstraction and symbolism. Searching gives way to the over analytical, whilst acceptance experiences it in the moment.