Title: Spendthrift: One Kilometre Drawing
Materials: till receipt paper, ballpoint pen, pasting table
Dimensions: 180cm long x 60 cm wide x approx 110cm high. 

‘Spend Thrift: One Kilometre Drawing’ is a kilometre of till receipt paper entirely covered on both sides with ballpoint pen. One year in the making, it is a memorial to pointless labour and reckless over-spending. It is an embodiment of the greasy, sickening panic one feels when faced with financial crisis and the very real emotional cost of consumption. Debt is considered to be a symptom of bipolar disorder. 



Spendthrift: One Kilometre Drawing, 2020

Title: Screw Up, Repeat: Lockdown Installation
Materials: tissue paper, found objects and spaces
Dimensions: size varies

Screw Up, Repeat: Lockdown Installation is a project undertaken in McDonnell's home during the first lockdown of 2020. It is comprised of hundreds of sheets of black tissue paper repeatedly crushed and flattened in a repetitive, obsessive manner and heaped up in small domestic spaces or interacting with workaday objects. ‘Screw Up Repeat’ engages with the sublime nature of bipolar mania, embodying psychomotor agitation, where pointless repetitive tasks are involuntary and grandiose projects are compulsive.

Screw-Up, Repeat - Lockdown Installation, 2020

Title: Rant, Regret, Repeat
Materials: aluminium, street ink
Dimensions: 30.5cm x 41cm

Rant, Regret, Repeat is a comment on the bipolar disorder symptom of rage. Each rant is is scrawled on to aluminium and then redacted with wire wool. As the ranting and regreting build there is a loss of comprehension and the words become irrelevant and disappear, reflecting how rage eventually dissipates.

Rant, Regret, Repeat, 2021

Title: Torn and Stuck
Materials: masking tape
Dimensions: size varies

McDonnell's Torn and Stuck installation speaks to a post-depressive malaise. Torn is taken literally as an action, but also references the Scot's word for miserable (as in torn-faced). Stuck is both the act of sticking of masking tape to a wall and also the mental position of not being able to move on emotionally. Torn and Stuck is not only a record of an action, but also an embodiment of a mood.

Torn and Stuck, 2020

Title: Accumulating Small Disappointments
Materials: old artworks, thread, yarn, fabric, found objects
Dimensions: 1m x 1m x 1m

Accumulating Small Disappointments is born out of a process of gathering together of failed artworks, ill-fitting clothing, discarded drawings and objects belonging to the artist, and binding them together. In this binding activity the shame and regret of failure is made physical and memorialised. Highlighting the bipolar disorder symptoms of grandiosity and risk-taking, these objects embody the after effects of a manic high.

Accumulating Small Disappointments, 2019

Title: Screw Up, Repeat: Lockdown Installation
Materials: tissue paper, fabric
Dimensions: 190cm x 280cm

Screw-Up, Repeat - Blue Monday engages with the sublime nature of bipolar mania, embodying psychomotor agitation, where pointless repetitive tasks are involuntary and grandiose projects are compulsive. The hundreds of sheets of tissue paper are screwed-up and flattened over and over again to change their physicality, pushing the material to it's limits, but holding back from complete disintegration. 

Screw-up, Repeat - Blue Monday, 2020

Title: Spendthrift
Materials: used till receipts, ballpoint pen, fabric
Dimensions: 4400cm x 2200cm

Spendthrift examines the shame of over-spending and debt. It is an accretion of many small redacted transactions, each receipt carefully and completely covered with ballpoint pen in a bid to hide a multitude of sins. It is a memorial to pointless labour and reckless over-spending. It embodies the greasy, sickening panic one feels when faced with financial crisis. McDonnell's work is focussed on the symptoms and behaviours of bipolar mania and overspending and debt are considered to be symptomatic of bipolar disorder.

Spendthrift, 2020

Title: Wall Piece
Materials: Chinese ink, paper
Dimensions: 5m x 6m x 2.5m

Wall Piece reflects the bipolar disorder symptom of rapid speech where a manic person becomes more talkative than usual or feels a pressure to keep talking. Reflecting the grandiose and sublime nature of mania, this work begins as a scrawl of works written on the walls of the gallery and then becomes solid escaping the two dimensional plane. The work is a tangled mess of words crawling along the walls and towering over the viewer.

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Kate McDonnell