Kate McMillan

Kate McMillan is an interdisciplinary artist and academic who works across film, sound, installation, sculpture, and performance. The impacts of the Anthropocene, the residue of colonial violence as well as the lost and systemically forgotten histories of women are key areas of research in her artwork, activism and academic writing.

History’s Debris is a series of seven digital prints created to accompany the immersive film-based installation The Lost Girl that centred on the fictional character of a cave-dwelling girl on the coast of England. Taking DH Lawrence’s book of the same name as a starting point, the film narrates the experiences of a young woman seemingly alone in a dystopian future, with only the debris washed up from the ocean. It is from this material that the film’s protagonist seeks to understand the world left behind. Fragments of things, from metal piping to plastic waste, are displayed specimen-like in the print series. The work speaks of capitalism and consumption and where nature and culture intersect.