Annabel McCourt is an international contemporary artist based in the UK. Her work ranges from lens-based gritty social-realism, through to public & installation art, moving image and architectural interventions inspired by fact, folklore & legend. Whatever the medium, McCourt tends to work on a vast, almost carnivalesque scale, infusing dystopian concepts with mordant humour.

 

Her 2017 ‘Electric Fence’, a giant electrified enclosure she assembled in response to an American pastor’s hate-fuelled rant about wanting to imprison and electrocute LGBTQIA+ communities. It was commissioned for Hull City of Culture in 2017 and has been touring since; including the Biennale of Contemporary African Art, ‘Dak’Art’, in Dakar, Senegal. ‘MAGA Grabber’ (2019), which brought the worst of Donald Trump’s ‘locker room talk’ to life in the form of an interactive arcade grabbing machine. Both explored ideas of complicity by encouraging visitors to participate in the spectacle, to defy their strongest impulses and touch the works.

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Annabel has exhibited artwork in the UK, Brazil, Australia, Senegal and China. In 2022 she was artist in residence at Diversa Arte Cultura in São Paulo inviting local people to be participants in an artwork ‘campaign’ coinciding with the world’s biggest Pride parade. She also exhibited at Midsumma Festival in Melbourne, Australia as part of the British Council’s UK/AUSTRALIA Season.

 

Recently her work has escaped the gallery into the public realm, where she has enjoyed critical acclaim.

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Photography has remained her first love and she has been taking photographs since the day her dad presented her with her first Olympus camera at fifteen.

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