Katie McGroarty – Artist Statement
Due to space constraints, we were unable to include Katie’s full artist statement in the Together | Apart ‘About the Artists’ book. So we are posting it in its entirely here.
Katie McGroaty
‘Soft Pig’
(2025)
Oil on board
In this body of work, a statue of two anthropomorphic pigs is used as a conduit for internalised hatred, hatred is projected onto them as well as spun out from them. Specifically, the work is a meditation on internalised misogyny as part of a larger theme in my work where I explore internalised misogyny’s roles in intersection with sectarianism in Scotland. Misogyny in its functionality requires comparison and therefore an “other”; within this praxis, the former and the “other” are intertwined as one through this relationship, while simultaneously severed apart by it. Ultimately, this mechanism is a cog in the bigger machine of patriarchy, a system which cages both the acter and the “other”; both are recaptured in this mechanism by those who do the bidding of the patriarchy in their policing, who are also harmed in this process and the continuation of their own cannibalistic actions.
I chose to use oil painting as it would highlight the status of the pig, heightened due to her policing of other pigs. She holds a platter with a severed pigs trotter on it, we can’t see her other trotter, it may well be her own, it could be someone else’s – she understands the patriarchy demands to be fed in this way, we don’t know to what extent she will go to to feed it. I chose to continue to use the pig statue for this piece due to pigs association with the police, highlighted in their role as class traitors in Animal Farm, in addition to their association with covering up crimes (such as eating every body part other than teeth.) I chose to keep the piggy pink colours to soften the piece, using the idea that the use of pink lessens the severity of the situation, as well as introduce the force of a lens of passive aggression to the audience. I am forcing them to confront Pig as the actioner, in turn risking their own position in through actions they complete due to instruction from a third party. While Pig and innocent pigs are intertwined in the same system – both sewn together and severed apart by it simultaneously – I, in discussing the work in this way, have sewn the audience and Pig together through a similar mechanism, and severed them apart by the same means.
– Katie McGroarty, 2026