Painting a Queer Nation: Sadie Lee and Mandy McCartin

Abstract

This article uses gender, sexuality, and national identity as analytic frameworks to discuss the early 1990s practice of two London-based painters, Sadie Lee and Mandy McCartin. Both artists embraced the representation of queer subjects in their work and, as such, produced a visual culture that openly contested the hetero-normative character of national identity in Britain through much of the twentieth century. It is remarkable then, given this context, that the artists and their works gained significant acclaim. This article examines Lee's and McCartin's paintings and their public reception as evidence of an important late millennial rupture in traditional discourses of British nationhood.