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C104
review
Belfast: Alastair MacLennan
at Ormeau Baths
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Alastair
MacLennan: Lid off a daffodil, actuation/installation,
Ormeau Baths Gallery, 2003; courtesy Ormeau Baths
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This exhibition had the
character of a retrospective, in so far as a very large
body of work that has been in live performances can be
recreated in a gallery. A part of the show was documentary,
consisting of slide and photographic images of previous
performances, another part was a video/tape presentation
which I took to be a kind of tour of subject matter and
images; and two rooms were devoted to particular pieces;
a major installation and an 'actuation' which the artist
developed and expanded as the time of the exhibition passed.
The only part of the oeuvre which was missing was drawing.
Over the years Maclennan has made a great quantity of
drawings, in, through and around the rest, and I was sorry
not to see some of them here. But the overall effect of
the exhibition was to emphasise how much an experienced
'live' artist is like any other. Seeing all this work
revealed the consistencies and playful qualities - such
as we might easily find in a Morandi or a Mondrian. Images,
ideas, materials and situations continually returned in
different guises, changing and developing, but always
around a centre which is never lost.
What or where is this centre?
Maclennan has been working for
many years and has done a great deal in many locations.
There is no space in a review to analyse all, or even
a large part in sufficient detail to answer those questions;
but I think we can point in a certain direction and get
partial or provisional answers. Some of these are particular
to this artist, but others have a wider application in
the field of performance.
I was struck by the degree, kind
and quality of craft attained in this, and by extension,
other high-quality per formance work. This is partly craft
in the obvious sense - the photography is extremely well,
though unostentatiously, presented. Objects are perfectly
placed. There is an air of precision and accomplishment
that comes from knowing exactly what you are doing. But
it is also craft in a wider sense, as in the craft of
thinking. The capacity to maintain self-knowledge and
yet be alert to new opportunities is a craft of thinking
that can be learnt and even taught, because it is a spiritual
discipline. In this respect, Maclennan's long practice
with the I Ching is relevant; The Book of Changes, like
all serious systems of divination, is a means of self-questioning
which provides a systematic way of keeping one alert to
the subtlest changes of thought and intention. The results
appear in a quality of neatness and deftness, both in
the treatment of objects and their placing, and in physical
presentation of the body, which ran all through the exhibition.
Everything is treated with equal attention, and perfected.
This seems to me a precondition of quality in performance
and live art. But what is it all about?
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Alastair
MacLennan: Unseeing trace, actuation/installation,
Ormeau Baths Gallery, 2003; courtesy Ormeau Baths
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Watching
his work over the years and seeing it brought together
in this way confirms me in my now long-held conviction
that the centre of Maclennan's work is to be found in
traditional Christian iconography. More precisely, in
the Reformed liturgy. This does not, of course, make him
into a 'religious' artist in the sense of his confirming
or affirming certain beliefs, but it grounds him in a
way of making sense of things through established metaphors.
And those metaphors are, without a shadow of doubt, the
central metaphors of the Reformation. We need only list
some of them...
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the wooden table covered with 'a fair linen cloth'
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the dish or bowl
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bread
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fish
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earth
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carpentry
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the restricted palette of black/white and natural materials
(amounting to chromophobia)
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the skull
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air, or breath
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antiphonal responses for the human voice
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and, of course, the suffering, patient body.
These are
not, obviously, exclusively protestant, and we are clearly
sometimes quite close to the worlds of Georges de la Tour,
or certain Spanish still-life painters. But it is a fact
that the artist was born and bred into the 'wee free'
presbyterian traditions of the Hebrides.
Each one
of the listed elements deserves a more extended comment,
but I would want to relate them all to the old Quakerly
practice of 'going as a sign'. This (traditionally) might
embrace going naked as a sign of lack of concealment,
performing emblematic actions (as when a Quaker lady walked
into the Rump Parliament carrying a large earthenware
pot, and shattered it in front of the scandalised Members,
signalising the fate that was coming their way), or re-enacting
an event (as when James Naylor entered Bristol on an ass,
challenging the magistrates to enact in their turn the
parts of the High Priests and of Pontius Pilate). In these
case, as in most (all?) performance art, the metaphor
is enacted through the human body. We have to do with
a form of secular theology, which goes to the heart of
the Eucharist and Communion without claiming 'religious'
meaning. The two large-scale installations were of this
character, the one as a form of public demonstration,
the other hermetic or half-concealed.
In one large
room the floor was entirely covered from front to back
and side to side with gleaming steel hospital bowls; a
tape of voices repeated names. The names being those of
all killed in the past thirty years, without exceptions.
(Different transformations of this piece have been seen
elsewhere.) The simple power of this room amazed everyone
who entered it; I saw people run out in alarm more than
once. Others were in or close to tears; tears of grief,
yes, but also, I think, of shame. We were all implicated
by it and in it.
In another
room a table piled with earth was slowly transformed into
a 'last supper' tableau complete with place-settings,
as the artist slowly, even cautiously, made daily alterations.
I suspect this 'actuation' commemorated a private grief,
but it did so in the immediately accessible visual display
of religious tradition.
Of course,
this is not as obvious as it was, and so far as I know
nobody else has commented on Maclennan's work in this
way; but if we step for a moment outside the prison of
our assumptions we see very clearly that the central imagery
of this exhibition, and indeed of a good deal of 'live'
art, is a secularisation of piety and sacrifice.
David Brett
is a former Chairperson of CIRCA and is currently completing
the second edition of his book The Plain Style: Protestant
Theology in the History of Design.
Alastair
Maclennan, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, January - March
2003
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