“Not an angel, exactly”
Kari Lee McInneny-McRae
31 Oct → 6 Dec 2026
Window
closing celebration, 5 Dec, 6 – 8 am
Through disability as a lens, Not an angel, exactly by Kari Lee McInney-McRae is a new project in the West Space Window presenting a consideration around the way bodies, objects and environments remember one another.
The grab rail remembers touch.
The twig remembers blackberry.
The body remembers surgery and diagnosis.
The sculpture remembers making.
The country remembers colonisation.
The archive remembers what institutions overlook.
Everything in this work seems to be carrying a history.
That, to me, is what allows it to become more than an autobiography.
Grounded in queer, Crip, and mad frameworks, Kari Lee’s practice is shaped by lived experience as a nonbinary, disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent person navigating systems not built for their survival. Not an angel, exactly, emerges from lived experience with endometriosis, chronic pain, and neurodivergence, and from repeated encounters with medical systems not designed for bodies like McInney-McRae's.
Bringing together sculpture and photography, the work explores how bodies adapt within structures that prioritise endurance over care. Familiar support objects~canes, stools, medical devices~are reconfigured into unstable forms that lean, buckle and shift, holding the tension between support and collapse. Cast bronze twigs, salvaged materials and photographic fragments echo the ongoing, often invisible labour of living with chronic illness.
Created in collaboration with photographer Alaiya, the photographic works position the body within a medical frame while quietly shifting the gaze. Bronze forms rest against skin, suggesting both intrusion and care, inviting viewers to look more slowly and with greater attentiveness.
Informed by queer and disability frameworks, including ideas of crip time and embodied difference, Not an angel, exactly, considers how pain reshapes time, perception, identity, and the body itself. Rather than seeking resolution, the work asks what it means to be seen, to be believed, and to exist within systems that continue to render certain bodies and experiences invisible. What might it mean to witness a body without trying to fix it?
Closing Celebration
Saturday 5 December, 5 → 7pm
Join us for refreshments on our balcony as part of Arts Access Victoria's Alter State closing party with our celebrations, there will be music, performances and art unfolding across Collingwood Yards all evening. Read on about what's happening here.
Kari Lee McInneny-McRae (they/them) is a Naarm-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, drawing, casting, found objects, and text. Using repetitive, rhythm-based techniques, Kari Lee processes complex emotional and political states, exploring memory, place, and radical modes of rest, resistance, and recovery through process-based making and embodied material engagement. Influenced by process philosophy, poetics, and language, Kari Lee approaches art-making as personal and political fieldwork ~ acts of care, critique, and quiet resilience. Their practice resists pathologisation and invites connection through intimate, tactile, and affective gestures.