IT will be a surreal, satirical and multi-coloured film where the reality of Brexit and Donald Trump meets the fantasy of Pinocchio.
This year’s Scottish show at the Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest and most prestigious visual arts festival, by the lauded Glasgow artist Rachel Maclean, will tackle the world of 'Fake News' and fantasy in a half hour art film called Spite Your Face.
The artist has shot the film in Glasgow, and like her previous work, it features the 29-year-old artist donning a variety of guises, prosthetics, makeup and assuming different voices.
It will be premiered at the 57th Biennale di Venezia, in a former church in the canal city, in May.
The last Scottish show at the Biennale, by Graham Fagen, partially addressed Scotland’s history with the slave trade, but this show looks likely to be one of Scotland + Venice’s most political pieces since it staged its first show, independent of the UK Pavilion, in 2003.
As well as the politics of Brexit and Trump, the film includes the children’s story Pinocchio and the traditional masks of Venice, particularly the long-nosed masks used in times of plague in times past.
Speaking at the Alchemy Film Festival in Hawick, the Borders, this weekend, Ms Maclean said: "I got quite interested in the narrative of Pinocchio, which is obviously an Italian tale, and linking that with ideas of post-truth politics.
"Does my nose get longer and longer? It might do.
"I was quite interested in narrative, and the power of certain narratives to overwhelm truth and objective facts.
"In the European Referendum and the Trump campaign, both UKIP and Trump did a very good job of putting together narratives that people could really understand and give them something to hang on to - and no matter now many facts seemed to be thrown at them, they were somehow impenetrable.
"So I kind of address that, the space between truth and narratives, and the power of belief.
"The film uses fairy tale tropes and narratives of politics in the film so you have different understandings of the same character."
She added: "I quite like the lack of truth in my work, it is a manipulation and a fabrication on so many different levels."
Maclean plays five characters in the film, which she has also written, including a main character whose name and story she will not divulge until the film is revealed in May.
The filming in Glasgow involved several other actors, who voice different characters played by Maclean, and the film is currently in a lengthy post-production process.
Like her other work, which is often hallucinatory and dream-like, it has been shot against a ‘green screen’ in Glasgow and then in post-production, Maclean adds effects, multiple versions of herself, in various costumes and masks, and utilises actors to alter her voice.
She ‘dresses’ the set with her own art works and manipulates its colours and scenes, as well as adding music.
Spite Your Face is in English and Italian with subtitles and, after it is shown at the Venice Biennale, will be shown at the Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh in 2018.
In Venice it will be shown on a large screen, with surround sound, in the Scottish venue, the Chiesa di Santa Caterina, and will be shown on a loop.
A lot of the ideas for the film were formulated during a ten day stay by Maclean in Venice last December.
Ms Maclean's costumes in the film are inspired by the many high-end fashion stores in the city, such as Gucci and Prada, "a kind of ‘modern Baroque’", she said..
She added: "Venice feels very different at that time of year, it is cold and empty and spooky, and it was just on the back of Donald Trump becoming President, it was an interesting moment to sit down and think about the world.
“It is quite a fragmented narrative, and I am working with a continuous loop, there is no distinct beginning and end."
She added: "The film at once has at once the feeling of being in a fairy tale or fantasy space but also at times really hitting things that feel more real and more current."
The exhibition runs from 13 May to 26 November.
The presentation has been commissioned and curated by Alchemy Film & Arts in partnership with Talbot Rice Gallery and the University of Edinburgh.
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