Lilly McElroy was raised in a small town in Southern Arizona where she spent a lot of time at rodeos. She won a few ribbons and once sold a sheep for a decent price. She was formally educated at The University of Arizona, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The time spent at those institutions lead to her unabashed interest in the cliché and the literal as well a her often misguided attempts at making authentic connections. It should be noted that Lilly has little to no interest in irony.
McElroy’s work has been featured in Artslant, Art on Paper, Modern Painters, shape + colour, SUDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, The Wall Street Journal, Elle Magazine, Chicago Tribune, The Year in Pictures by James Danziger as well as featured on NPR. She is represented by Thomas Robertello Gallery in Chicago, IL. : www.thomasrobertello.com
“I grew up in southern Arizona, surrounded by cliché representations of my own experiences. There were cowboys riding bulls and coyotes howling on moonlit nights. There were epic sunsets and there was implied violence. This has been translated into paper mache landscapes and playfully antagonistic videos. My relationship with the place that I am from has partially become a performance for the camera and the new relationships that I am trying to form are headed that direction. It is though these performances that I attempt to develop authentic ties, to give the cliché new and personal meaning.
The gestures that I enact are simultaneously loving and cruel; they are an attempt to discuss the desire and difficulty involved in making a connection and that desire is the crux of my artwork. The end result is often literal and clumsy, a cross between physical comedy and earnest confessional.
The photographs, videos, and installations that I produce, while trying to interact, acknowledge the possibility of failure — that someone might not catch me, that a connection might not be made. It is that possibility that keeps things interesting. In the end, I want to make the viewer laugh, but I wants them to understand that there is more at stake, that everyone is implicated – including me.” Lilly McElroy
http://lillymcelroy.com
