Alastair Mackie in conversation with curator Vincent Honoré
Vincent Honoré: This exhibition is your first solo presentation in London since 2005. We had been developing it for more than twelve months. You decided to produce three major new works and not show past works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. How did you conceive this exhibition? Does it mark an important step in your artistic practice?
Alastair Mackie: The conception of the show came at an interesting time for me, just as I was starting to relax with the way that my work was going — really for the first time. I had previously been doing a lot of group shows, but wanted to stop showing my work for a while so that I could take stock and focus more specifically on ideas. This exhibition gave me something more specific to focus on, so in a sense it was good timing.
VH: The works are ambitious, not only in terms of scale but also in that they sum up a number of your previous preoccupations. You carefully choose the materials to highlight the tensions between natural and constructed structures. Using uncommon materials in surprising ways enables you to create at once delicate and unsettling sculptures and installations, and to raise a subtle sense of the uncanny. Can you describe the way you created the three works?
AM: I had worked with some of the materials before but felt that they could be pushed further. I wanted to focus more on the processing roll behind the production of a piece, which was becoming more and more important to the general concept of the work as well as the relationship between the end product and the original material. The doll's house and the loom were both very much process-based pieces, whereas Metamorphoses was more of a diversion, something that would off-set the atmosphere of the show by approaching similar ideas from a different angle, both conceptually and aesthetically.
VH: Could you explain further the loom piece, its process and how you made the work?
AM: Over a period of one year, I have collected tens of thousands of barn owl pellets (the regurgitated indigestible parts of a mouse). These were subsequently processed into their raw components of mouse fur and bone. The fur was then spun into yarn and the yarn woven into a sheet of fabric with the use of a loom. The skeletons which are the by-products of the process, have been left in a heap alongside the loom to show the correlation between the length of fabric to the number of mice it took to make it.
VH: Childhood, science, beliefs and traditions are some of the themes you had been addressing in your work: they all point to a broader exploration of time, decay and melancholia — with, from time to time, a certain sense of humour and absurdity. This description could also apply to works produced by Damien Hirst or Kris Martin. How do you position your work first in the previous generation of English artists (YBA in particular) and second, in the current contemporary debate?
AM: The YBA generation were in their prime when I was at art school. Although I had been making ‘things’ for a long time they helped me understand where I was coming from — in terms of why I was making these things, and inspired me to become an artist. Much of their works shared a sense of sensationalism, which I appreciated, but this is quite different to the feeling that I’d like my own work to hold — which is quiet in comparison. In this sense I believe my work relates more closely to particular artists from the current generation who are using a less loud voice, but speaking a similar language.
VH: Could you name some of these artists?
AM: Initially, although they’re probably considered to be more associated with the slightly older generation, artists like Tom Friedman, Olafur Eliasson and Ai Weiwei strike a cord. From the current generation I am interested in the work of artists similar to Jochem Hendricks, Mircea Cantor and Kris Martin.
VH: You will be also presenting a public art project in London, coinciding with the exhibition at DRAF, and you are planning your first catalogue for the spring, etc. Can you explain these projects?
AM: The public art project will be at the Economist Plaza, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Society as part of their programme of outdoor sculptural works. It’s my first outdoor piece and touches on ideas to do with place, context and confrontation. The book will be published by Other Criteria as the second in a new series of project-based publications on young artists. It will be focused on the two process-based pieces I’ve been working on this year — the loom and the doll’s house. RS&A have commissioned me to make a chess set for the forthcoming The Art off Chess Exhibition at Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, opening at the end of January and there are a few group exhibition opportunities looming as well as my first major exhibition with AVA, which is penciled in for 2010.