Chad McCail produced this work as part of the Edinburgh Printmakers’ International Festival Exhibition in 2008. McCail took advantage of screenprinting’s flat graphic qualities, working at scale and in series to produce 15 works printed by studio printers Alastair Clark and Gillian Murray.

This screen print is characterist of McCail's work, depicting a harmonious world in which repression and violence are absent. He uses storyboards and brightly coloured scenes describe the mechanisms of oppression, reminiscent of the simple and didactic illustrations in children's books such as the popular Ladybird series.

Biography

Chad McCail is a printmakers, painter and sculptor. He was born in 1961 in Manchester and grew up in Edinburgh. He lives and works in Thankerton, South Lanarkshire. He studied at Goldsmiths College, London.

Chad McCail worked closely with Edinburgh Printmakers printmaking specialists to produce editions for his bold solo exhibition Edinburgh Printmakers Presents Chad McCail in 2008.

McCail's main interests are the links between sexual repression, violence and totalitarian obedience. He depicts harmonious worlds where repression and violence are absent. He also visually describes the mechanisms of oppression. McCail's brightly coloured paintings are influenced by illustrations for children's books, simple and didactic in form.

Chad McCail's work recalls the kind of visual information that surrounds us every day. His works recall school textbooks, how-to guides, comics and public information campaigns.

This material is often used by authority figures such as governments or teachers, but the artist turns his sources on their head. Rather than telling us what we should or shouldn't do, he imagines and describes ideal worlds where people take care of each other and share their resources without conflict. He uses images as a way to explain the processes that he believes have driven our fear of such change. McCail's subject is ourselves: how we grow up, are educated, our workplaces, our economy, relationships between the sexes and the very structure of society itself. 

His solo exhibitions include: Systemic, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2010); We are not dead, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2006) and Food, Shelter, Clothing, Fuel, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2004). McCail exhibited in British Art Show 5 in 2000.