Celebrated artist Pete McKee announces his brand-new exhibition Don’t Adjust Your Mindset exploring themes including digital dependence, climate change, police brutality, internet fame and socioeconomic disparity in the wake of the pandemic. It will be the Sheffield-born artist’s first major exhibition since 2018 and the first time he has exhibited in London in nearly a decade.
Don’t Adjust Your Mindset takes over London’s Hoxton Arches from Thursday 22 April – Sunday 1 May before heading to Pete’s hometown of Sheffield from Saturday 13 – Sunday 22 May 2022.
Comprising paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations, Don’t Adjust Your Mindset explores modern British life and how we communicate today and, curated in the wake of the pandemic, marks a shift in focus for the Sheffield-born artist.
Pete McKee said:
During the pandemic everyone’s life was completely turned upside-down with most of us increasing the time they spent online, especially on social media. I turned to my phone for companionship and used it as a window to the outside world. When scrolling its screen over the following months, I saw a mixture of anger, injustice, LOLs, contrary opinions, misinformation and a plethora of community-spirited endeavours to lift the mood of the nation. It was like someone had found society’s volume button and turned it up to 11.
I decided to start organising and making sense of what I saw by creating art which examined the world that surrounds us, much of which we view through a device.
Known for his funny, nostalgic and touching work, this brand-new exhibition delivers the humour his fans and art critics have come to expect, tinged with dry, satirical and dark observations of the world that surrounds us and how we interact with it. Prompted by the pandemic, which saw so many of us turn to our screens for a window into the real world.
An undeniable sign of our times is the increasing financial pressure placed on the majority of the older generation by the steady increase in the state pension age. Symbolising this increasingly disenfranchised and underrepresented sector of society, Happy Jack depicts an individual forced back into work because his state pension isn’t enough to support his household. Some people choose to continue working however, Jack is an individual who doesn’t have a choice but to work.
Climate Change is explored in a brand-new painting Wish You Were Here. Designed like an old postcard and depicting a collapsing sandbank strewn with detritus, including a holiday caravan, this piece makes an important and poignant point about the earth’s increasing fragility. However, the light-hearted way in which this message is delivered alludes to the fact that while many of us are very concerned about global warming and rising sea levels, some of us are unwilling to change how we behave in order to mitigate it.
Another topic of contemporary significance, not least as we emerge from nearly two years of restrictions, is the hospitality crisis which sees the industry wrestle with problems including shifting consumer habits, tax rises and job security. A play on Manet’s The Absinthe Drinker The Absent Drinker depicts an empty pub table, a solitary coaster on its corner and a view out to high rise flats through the window behind. Where The Absinthe Drinker shows an inebriated man out on a dark street, The Absent Drinker references the steady decline of certain UK pubs in the last 20 years. While chain pubs in bustling city centres continue to grow, their clientele transient and ever changing, small independent establishments and those on the outskirts of major cities, are in sharp decline. This represents more than the financial impact on the owners of these establishments, as The Absent Drinker alludes to a loss of community as much as it does revenue.
Alongside painted works, Don’t Adjust Your Mindset features a series of photographs that explore how much we communicate online and how we rely heavily on emojis to express our emotions. These works pose questions such as: “does social media bring us closer together or isolate us from one another?” “Does it allow us to express our emotions more freely or give us more opportunity to hide what we feel?”
Don’t Adjust Your Mindset is Pete’s first major exhibition since his hugely successful 2018 sell-out show, This Class Works. It is also the first time in nearly a decade that he has exhibited in London.