Vitamin D3:
McNally’s work is included in the latest instalment of Phaidon’s Vitamin D3 (2021):
‘Vitamin D3: Today’s Best in Contemporary Drawing’
‘The latest instalment of this indispensable survey of contemporary drawing, chosen by the world's leading art experts
Over the past 50 years, drawing has been elevated from a supporting role to a primary medium, ranking alongside painting as a central art form. Since the publication of Vitamin D (2005) and D2 (2013), contemporary artists have continued to explore drawing's possibilities - from intimate to large-scale works, in a diversity of mark-making processes and materials. Vitamin D3 showcases more than 100 such artists, nominated by more than 70 international art experts.’
‘The often large-scale graphite and charcoal drawings of Emma McNally are regularly likened to maps and charts, and while this is only part of the story, the comparison provides a useful point of entry into her intricate practice. A work such as Scratches Traces Spaces (2015) - a digital inversion of a drawing - resembles an aerial diagram or annotated satellite view of some unknown site of great significance, like a vast military base, covered with layer upon layer of data, the cartographers callipers, compass and ruling pen evoked through the myriad marks, lines, dots and dashes that the artist painstakingly employs. The imagination is allowed plenty of scope to interpret what the eyes see; whether flight paths or walking routes, telecommunication signals or bombing targets, the topography is defined, demarcated , catalogued. Graphic boxes and strips function as de facto labels., simulating text, adding to the sense that reconnaissance and data analysis are the primary objectives. While warfare, power, and control in the digital era spring to mind, this could just as easily be a chart mapping distant galaxies or the results of some deep sea survey. ... The ambiguously titled SG (2019) looks like the kind of image found in a book about urban planning, charting how a village grew into a town and then a city, or revealing something about the demographics in specific geographical areas. McNally is a magician of infographics, creating the illusion of visual systems giving us rich, open-ended abstractions that evoke thoughts on both macro and micro levels, fro atoms to nebulae, individuals to civilisations, milliseconds to millennia........
While some works are strikingly graphic, others are elemental verging on the sublime. The dark and brooding Choral Field 9 (2016), from a series of twelve imposing graphite works, triggers thoughts of landscapes and harsh weather, such as desert storms or forest fires seen from ground level, volcanic eruptions of storm clouds viewed from the air. The drama and power of the natural world can be keenly sensed. This body of work was made in McNally's studio on West India Dock on the bank of the Thames in London, not only inviting analogies to water -waves crashing or powerful currents - but to other, often invisible forces, such as magnetic fields, electrical currents, or sound waves. The musical reference in the title suggests that the polyphony of a choir is akin to the symphony of sound in the natural world, and the artist's complex visual vocabularies orchestrate this idea with both gusto and finesse. A self-taught artist whose interest and passion for drawing developed alongside her academic studies in the fields of philosophy, McNally takes the viewer along on her exploration of the universe - of waves particles and beyond..’
- Matt Price ‘Vitamin D3: Today’s Best in Contemporary Drawing’ (Phaidon 2021)