Artist Profile Tori McLean
Tori McLean, Automaton (triptych comprised L to R of The Maiden – Am I Purely Decorative?, The Mother – Do I Merely Multiply?, and The Crone – Where Does My Value Lie?), 2025, Acrylic, aluminium, card, charcoal screen prints, digitally printed canvas, embossed etching, laser-cut plywood, laser-cut plywood & acrylic, photo-lithographs, sublimation printed textiles, UV printed plywood, UV printed plywood & acrylic, UV printed plywood, acrylic & aluminium, wood, wood veneers, bells, cord, human hair, moon necklace, origami, pearls, ribbons, ring, metal, & music box mounted on board, 40″ x 53″ x 14″ (1020 mm x 1340 mm x 340 mm) framed.
McLean’s virtuosic mechanical triptych transforms female stereotypes into an active, participatory interrogation of value.
Artist Statement
At a time when AI threatens to hard-code old biases into new technologies, McLean’s work examines how female stereotypes and archetypes become deeply embedded – shaping identity, opportunity, and perceived worth.
Rooted in material curiosity and process experimentation, McLean combines open-ended questions, playfulness, and nostalgia with shifts between analogue and digital processes. This interplay reflects tensions between intention and accident, perfection and imperfection, revealing how these dynamics influence the perception, representation and treatment of women in society.
Drawing on the joy of childhood play to create disarming entry points into layered ideas, McLean’s automatons transform wall-art into active, participatory encounters where viewers set figures in motion and become complicit in the power dynamics between observer and object. Through the archetypes of Maiden, Mother, and Crone, she explores how societal expectations, and female stereotypes continue to shape women’s lives. Each figure poses its own question to challenges assumptions around beauty, reproduction, and labour, inviting deeper reflection on where female value truly lies.
In confronting these forces, McLean presses for a reimagining of female value before outdated biases are irreversibly hard-coded into our future, shaping generations and limiting possibilities for equity and self-determination.
Artist Biography
Tori McLean (b. 1969, Cambridge) is a UK-based interdisciplinary artist working across print, installation, and sculpture. Her practice uses the language of childhood play to explore complex questions of female value through interactive and playful works.
McLean holds an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art (2025). Her work is held in the collections of the V&A, RCA, and Hampshire Cultural Trust, as well as in private collections in Europe, the USA, and Australia. She is the recipient of the Travers Smith CSR Art Programme (2025/6) and was named one of ColourHive’s New Talent: 15 Best Names to Watch (2025). Other accolades include the Designext International Grand Prize (New York), the Elle Decoration/B&Q Textile Design Award, and the Society of Designer Craftsmen Distinction Award.
McLean has exhibited with venues including Bankside Gallery, the Mall Galleries, Southwark Park Galleries, Hockney Gallery (London), and Designext (New York). Upcoming highlights include exhibiting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture (2025) and her first solo show, Pattern & Progress (2025). She has also been selected by London Art Collective for inclusion in their ArtEvol publication (2025).