Aurelia Mckelvey

Aurelia Mckelvey’s work is characterized by the themes of data, sustainability, language, perception, communication and equality realized through a variety of techniques including experimental drawing, laser etching and photography.

During her time at the Royal College of Art her mixed media projects have sought to provoke debate on philosophical and contemporary concerns including housing, education, gender and the environment.

Aurelia also designed and delivered a variety of workshops in colleges and schools, the aim of which was to give students a wider range of tools to approach creative briefs. She is hoping to develop these workshops into a community engagement project.

REDESIGN // Manmade

This is a research-based drawing project looking at the gender imbalance in relation to the one size fits men. The catalyst for this investigation was the book entitled Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez (2019). In the book she exposed the data bias in a world designed for men. Statistics she presents show that many objects and the wider environment are at best difficult for women to use and at worst life threatening.

The work aims to highlight the imbalance in the design world by focusing on three aspects. In current vehicle and car design, women are 47% more likely to be injured in a car crash. Women are considered out of place drivers due to the design of car seats. Because the dimensions of the building brick is too large for a female hand span, women are disadvantaged in the construction industry. Because the standard office temperature was designed around the resting metabolic rate of the average 40yr old 70kg man, it is approximately 5 degrees too cold for women in the office environment.

The work is represented through a series of deconstructions and visual interplay, highlighting these biases in design through a combination of photography, sculpture, drawing and collage. Drawing underpins this project, ranging from technical working drawings to sequential and kinetic drawings which documents our relationship with the objects. What is paramount is a desire to create a visual language which is a marriage of concept and aesthetics.

The work presents a dichotomy between the documentation of industrial materials and the resulting delicate and ethereal quality of the drawings themselves.

Through this process of admixture Aurelia has developed a series of protest drawings. Redesign = Revolution.

Criado-Perez, C., 2019. Invisible women.