The Queen
This digital print is created combining animation and photography, depicting a satirical portrait of Mary Queen of Scots in a bright red wig, wearing exaggerated Elizabethan makeup and a cap adorned with Union Jacks. A skeletal figure, wearing a red beard and tartan Tam O’Shanter hat, appears next to the Queen, clutching her right shoulder. The two figures are surrounded by images of contemporary Scottish tourist culture – a drape of tartan and a large golf ball. The Queen carries a golf club, in place of her crucifix, critiquing the more typical representations of Mary Queen of Scots as a pious Catholic martyr, and perhaps humorously alludes to the way that golf is excessively used in stereotypical images of Scottish national identity.
This character appears in Maclean’s video work, The Lion and the Unicorn from 2012 – referencing the Scottish and English symbols that appear on the United Kingdom’s Royal coat of arms – that looks at Scotland’s relationship with the United Kingdom. In Maclean’s film, Mary Queen of Scots’ voice is created using clips of Queen Elizabeth II speaking during her annual televised Christmas messages. The larger-than-life, kitchy aesthetic of the print work, that Maclean creates using 3D animation software, underscores the surreality of the image. Maclean is interested in deconstructing the mythologies that lie behind the construction of Scottish national identity. The print was commissioned as part of a series titled, ‘I HEART SCOTLAND,’ for Edinburgh Printmakers responding to the lead up the Scottish Referendum of 2014, to question the way that romanticised representations of Scottish and British national identity are used for contemporary political agendas.