THE BIRTH OF FORM?
AN INTERVIEW BY GRACE TELEGDY
The Youth (Part Two), 2018.
Woven glass seed beads on wool.
51 x 38 cm.
What is the value of ritual in an era of incessant disruption and unfamiliar stimulation? Through the works of Alasdair McLuckie, we learn that ritual is both traditional and incredibly avant-garde.
Repetition and methodology are not merely making-practices, they are a force against thoughtless consumption and discardment. Reimagining formalist traditions, such as methodical line-work, whilst simultaneously flipping these traditions on their heads—literally and figuratively—McLuckie demonstrates the need, and tangible possibility, for ritual.
The Wrong Side of Luck, 2022
Acrylic on canvas.
Sensitivity Reader, 2022
Acrylic on canvas.
THE LAB MAG: Could you tell us a little bit about you, your history.
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE : I was born in 1984 in Melbourne, Australia, where I still live and work. My practice adopts meticulous process and strategies of appropriation to explore modernisms canonised movements - questioning the possibility of creation and its potential impossibility.
The works exists in a paradoxical space of making, where only variations on existing themes or new remixes of the old are the only realistic parameters of any new creative endeavour. This isn’t intended to be defeatist or pessimistic, but a celebration of the human creatures great capacity for imitation. From this position, my work examinations broad concepts such as influence and inheritance, authenticity and invention and of ownership and theft.
(Top to Bottom) OK 6, 2021.
Woven glass seed beads on linen.
31 x 51 cm.
OK 3, 2021
Woven glass seed beads on linen.
31 x 51 cm.
THE LAB MAG: How does your perspective contribute to your work?
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE: I think a lot about time and its relentless effect as an inherent aspect of any work of art. The use of appropriation in my practice talks specifically to the evolving patterns and dynamic that time imposes on image, object and idea.
I consider my perspective - personal, historical, social, and creative - in relationship to the modernist works (and their authors) that I reference. The time between then and now is always present in my practice, and the complications that arise in that temporal distance are a constant element in how I approach making.
THE LAB MAG: Who, what, or where inspires you?
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE: Being lucky and privileged enough to exist in this glorious age inspires me.
Everything else flows from there.
(From Left to Right) My Diet Is A Riot/Untitled 1992, 2021.
Acrylic on canvas.
My Diet Is A Riot/Bust Of Man 1972, 2022.
Acrylic on canvas.
My Diet Is A Riot/Large Reclining Nude 1935, 2022.
Acrylic on canvas.
THE LAB MAG: What does Form mean to you as an artist?
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE: Form is the structure within which the specific problem solving and bizarre narratives I choose to indulge in find their appropriate expression.
THE LAB MAG: Is there a medium that you most prefer?
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE: Collage!
This is a self-reflective choice, as by nature, I recognise that I’m a control freak when it comes to making. Early in my professional career as an artist, I realised that this tendency towards control was counterproductive to any sense of longevity in my practice. I initially introduced collage as a way to disrupt that tendency—and it quickly became foundational to my thinking and resulting work.
Collage is now both a strategy and a technique for me. Conceptually, it aligns with the core ideas I’m interested in, which is also why it remains my favoured method of making, regardless of the final material or process I’m working with.
Untitled, 2012.
Modern Love, 2013.
THE LAB MAG: Is there a piece you are most proud of?
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE: No. Increasingly, I think of my practice not as a series of related individual pieces, but as the ongoing engagement with an idea—punctuated simply by marks and movements.
Full Bourgeois, 2022.
Acrylic on canvas.
The Grass Root, 2022.
Acrylic on canvas.
THE LAB MAG: Could you talk a bit about your most recent exhibition, The Birth of Form?
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE: The Birth of Form at Murray White Room, here in Melbourne, Australia, is the second iteration of the exhibition that was first displayed at mother’s tankstation in Dublin in 2017. The body of work includes 20 woven glass seed bead panels.
As well as continuing my interest in the ritual and discipline of making—through the project’s obsessive application of reputation—these works serve as a kind of meta-exercise, exploration of how profoundly material and technique informs the visual aesthetics of the creative action.
(From left to right) Birth of Form/Water Like Milk, 2016.
Woven glass seed beads on wool.
51 x 38 cm.
Birth of Form/Cut Your Teeth, 2016.
Woven glass seed beads on wool.
51 x 38 cm.
Birth of Form/Fifteen Minutes Worth of Jelly, 2016.
Woven glass seed beads on wool.
51 x 38 cm.
Birth of Form/Night Shades, 2016.
Woven glass seed beads on wool.
51 x 38 cm.
ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE is a multimedia artist exploring the relationship between folk tradition and formalist aesthetics. His most recent exhibition, “THE BIRTH OF FORM” on display at the Murray White Room in Melbourne, Australia, contemplates how technique, form and process effect aesthetics.
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