Dani McKenzie

Long Story Short LA is pleased to present the first international exhibition by Melbourne-based artist, Dani McKenzie Room With a View.

Influenced by cinematic storytelling, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), and the work of Gail Albert Halaban, McKenzie’s psychologically charged canvases construct a fragmented narrative of two women who share the same apartment. As they go about isolated everyday activities - getting ready, having breakfast, watching Netflix on a laptop - there is the sense of a third character. One who is not seen, but doing the seeing.

The title of the exhibition, Room With a View, is familiar enough not to warrant much attention, a phrase you might hear in reference to a vacation. Perhaps it’s a hotel room on a high floor, or an Airbnb that looks out to the sea. However, the view from this apartment, what our protagonists see, is never revealed in the work. Tracing the subtle tension that threads through the paintings, what soon becomes apparent is that the ‘view’ is inside the apartment... And the viewer?

Dani McKenzie is an Australian born artist, who currently lives and works in Melbourne. Since graduating from the MFA program at the National Art School in Sydney (2016), McKenzie has held several solo exhibitions in Australia including: Evening’s Empire, Mars Gallery, Melbourne (2022); Close to Home, Olsen Gallery, Sydney (2022); Nowhere Near, MARS Gallery (2021), and Recognising Strangers, Olsen Gallery (2020). She has participated in several group exhibitions including Romancing the Streetscape, at Town Hall Gallery in Melbourne (2023), and National Art-Part One, a touring exhibition of prominent alumni from the National Art School over 50 years (2018-2021). In 2019, McKenzie was awarded the 'Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize’ in Melbourne, and in 2017 she was a recipient of the ‘Onslow Storrier Residency’ at la Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.