Gemma Mackenzie is an artist whose practice investigates the shifting dynamics between control and its collapse, the reversible and the irreversible, and the transitional states that occupy the space between these conditions. Everyday worries form a central focus within her work, including themes such as climate change, growing mould, health anxiety, and self‑image. She questions these ideas through the interaction between materials and the outcomes that emerge when they are combined, working across print, sculptural forms, and drawing. She explores disturbances within form, pattern, and surface, revealing the tensions that arise through processes of transformation and disruption. She wants her work to make light of these situations, opening up space for conversation and allowing others to recognise their own experiences within them.

‘The Embodied Vivarium’ speaks to the way we can never fully escape outside of our own minds. Our thoughts, feelings and inner struggles are always with us, perpetually circulating and shifting states. We live inside a body that becomes comparable to a cage, containing restless emotional currents that are constantly fluctuating. Underneath the version of ourselves that we portray to the world, we all have a complex emotional landscape. These hidden inner worlds are something we all carry, even if we never speak of them. It is in the shared weight of being human, in the difficulties we navigate, that connection forms. Our struggles can become points of mutual commonalities that bind us, creating kinship rooted in the fact that none of us are alone in what we feel, even though we may assume that we are.

Venue: Gallery333, Exeter Phoenix

An intimate window gallery for micro-installations and sculptural interventions.

Gallery333 is generously supported by Indira Carr.