Calder MacKay

Born in Perth Scotland

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist Statement

There is this certain feeling that engulfs us living today. This cyclical cynicism was breathed upon us by the many agents of modernity. These devices show us the greatest highs and lowest lows of the modern world. Forcing us into a distant and segregated way of living. We detach ourselves or else it consumes us. Either we spiral into hopelessness, or become so overstimulated, real positivity dissolves. Existing in this numb in-between. Sorrowful and anxious, but spoonfed just enough to keep us from falling. We become emotionally distant, socially fractured ghosts of our past selves. A tangible world where nothing is wrong, yet nothing feels attainable or worthwhile. Each of us are a product of this circus. This absurd comedy that spotlights the acutely warped way we view, process and discard the media of human lives.

MacKay wants to understand this media, drawing from found imagery, digital and archival to understand just what got us here. His painting practice incorporates the archive not as a call to return to the past, but to question what we've replaced it with? By exposing this polarity over time, he wants to unpick our past, change how we view today and look for a more hopeful tomorrow. Shouting out to the viewer to acknowledge what is going on now. Not after the fact, but now. As during these times of uncertainty and oppression there is a quiet reshuffling. Reclamation through artful defiance. We can't keep running away from it, we need to run straight towards it. Why? To satiate this desperate yearning for something more than a pretty good life.

Education

2025-26 Royal College of Art, London

2020-24 Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design

Awards

RSA David Michie Travel Award 2024

RSA New Contemporaries 2025 

Boom Graduates Dissertation Publication Award 2024

Visual Arts Association New Artist Award 2025

Jacksons Art Prize Longlist 2026