Born and raised in Glasgow, a city that had been ravaged by de-industrialisation and urban decay, McKenzie frequently borrows anachronistic stylistic and aesthetic modes found in catalogues and books to highlight societal issues and implement nostalgic utopias. McKenzie treats her ‘source material as reflections of social reality – particularly gender issues – and of the changes that have taken place in the art world over recent decades, often so inconspicuously that they initially went unnoticed’ (S. Urbaschek, quoted in Hold the Colour: Paulina Olowska/Lucy McKenzie, exh. cat., Sammlung Goetz, Munich 2007, p. 46). In The New Deal, McKenzie perceptively fuses a careful stylistic selection of source material with an engaging social imperative.