About Lorna Mills

• “Mills’s work suggests that in a world of seemingly limitless porn, the notion of public decency is anachronistic”
• https://canadianart.ca/features/lorna-mills-and-her-subversive-gif-art/
• Lorna Mills began her solo career as an artist during the 1990’s. During the 2000’s she focused mainly on video animation and began showing her work in exhibits
• In 2013, her GIFs were projected at the Art Gallery of Ontario as a part of the David Bowie exhibition, David Bowie Is… This exhibition showcased her reputation as one of Toronto's most experienced media artists.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Mills
• She is raunchy, uncensored, and speaks openly about her interests.
• “Her favourite subjects include “cross-species romance, dogs with itchy butts, drunk people barfing, strange fish, cloud formations, car crashes with test dummies flying out of them, weird glitches from video games that force human bodies into unnatural contortions, hilarious porn scenes, baby pratfalls, animals with clothes on, dogs humping unsuspecting humans, people wanking, kangaroos wanking, bears wanking”—anything outrageous, raunchy or abject.”
• “Her cuts are never surgical: large chunks of background imagery adhere to the figures’ edges, giving them a grainy, pulsating aura.”
• https://canadianart.ca/features/lorna-mills-and-her-subversive-gif-art/
• Focus on net art – “An elusive and sometimes anarchic art form which uses the internet as its primary material”
• https://netspecific.net/en/netspecific/what-is-net-art

Her website: digitalmediatree.com/sallymckay/LornaMillsImageDump/

Artworks of focus:

• Ungentrified (2014)
• https://www.artsy.net/artwork/lorna-mills-ungentrified
• Petting Zoo: Epic Biblical (2020)
• Petting Zoo: Noble Orphans (2021)
• https://www.artsy.net/artwork/lorna-mills-petting-zoo-epic-biblical

Relation to Course

• Lorna’s use of GIF in the early 2000’s was revolutionary, coming at a time where the early internet was changing forever.
• As early internet webpages are disappearing, Lorna begins to use this style to create art that she would use in exhibitions, keeping it alive even through today.
• “wellnow.wtf” http://wellnow.wtf/ is a similar style based on the thoughts and feelings of COVID-19 quarantine, co-curated by Lorna Mills and two other artists.