Untitled Document

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"I would have given a prize to Alastair MacLennan for his installation In the Irish pavilion at the Biennale. Strips of clear plastic, pinned to the walls, flutter In the breeze of a fan. On each strip is printed a name; on tape, these are read aloud like entries In the telephone directory, and new names accumulate In a stainless-steel bowl. These are people killed In Northern Ireland since 1969, when the recent 'Troubles' began. A hospital bed heaped with soil, artificial limbs, a Zimmer frame and a cluster of infants' coffins add an element of theatre to this moving exhibit."

Sarah Kent, BATTLE SCARS: The Venice Biennale 1997, Time Out July 16-23 1997

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Trusting Inter-Relations
Circa magazine, June 1997
Mark Dawes talks about Alastair MacLennan in the Real World

	BODY OF (D)EARTH Installation representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale 1997. c/o Nuova Icona Gallery 454 Giudecca, Venice, Italy 15th June - 15th August 1997 * * *
		"Fiach Mac Conghail had his finger on the pulse when he had commissioned the Irish entry; Irvine and Alastair MacLennan. MacLennan's, elegiac installation and performance was profoundly moving and must have taken great patience to install, in the second living quarters of the Nuova Icona Gallery director." SSI NEWSLETTER Sept/Oct 1997 SCULPTORS SOCIETY OF IRELAND * * *
		"The work in 'Art from Ireland' certainly doesn't let the side down. Alastair MacLennan's installation 'Body of (D)earth', a substantially modified version of his last show, in the Project Gallery, is a sober look at the human cost of the Troubles, and like them, it creeps up on you unawares, so that you're already in too deeply when you realise just what's going on. Primed by certain props along the way you enter a room that has the chilly, antiseptic air of a hospital operating theatre or mortuary. On a trolley is a funereal heap of earth, surmounted by two tree trunks. A couple of other objects distract you, so that you are aware of a gridded, tile-like pattern on the walls, but it is only when you retreat to one of these walls, to put some distance between yourself and the raw presence of the earth that you notice the regular pattern is forted by thread bisected by strips of clear plastic on which are printed names. They are the names of individuals killed in the Troubles in Northern Ireland from 1969 to the beginning of this year. An English curator, much taken with the installation, remarked on the complexity and subtlety of its logic. Its associations with damage and death, its disturbing evocation of the graveside, the link between the tree limbs and the prosthetic apparatus also present, and the terrible realisation that each tiny, detailed line of text is a person like yourself." "Rotting meat and heaps of earth" (extracts) by Aidan Dunne THE TRIBUNE MAGAZINE OF IRELAND 22 June 1997 * * *
	"It is not unusual for Venice to show off its splendors far from the Giardini's gates,… Two of the more compelling national representations are located along one or another vaporetto line: in the progressive Galleria Nuova lcona, Ireland's Jaki lrvine shows video-tapes of urban encounters while Alastair MacLennan's installation focuses with grim clarity on violence in the north." Dan Cameron for ARTFORUM Sept. 1997
	* * * "…and projects as different as Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones's city-wide installation of pink neon passages from Ulysses, For Dublin, and a vigil by Alastair MacLennan exploring the social impact of heroin, filled the streets of the capital." "…Highlights:Jaki Irvine's slow, seeping sound and video installation, Another Difficult Sunset, and Alastair MacLennan's quiet memorial, Body of(D)Earth, made the Irish contribution to this year's Venice Biennale the quiet highlight of an often deadly and mostly overblown show." Luke Clancy, The Irish Times "Journey into the space of zeros and ones, installation/multi-media", p.11, 17th, December 1997.
	* * * "I would have given a prize to Alastair MacLennan for his installation In the Irish pavilion at the Biennale. Strips of clear plastic, pinned to the walls, flutter In the breeze of a fan. On each strip is printed a name; on tape, these are read aloud like entries In the telephone directory, and new names accumulate In a stainless-steel bowl. These are people killed In Northern Ireland since 1969, when the recent 'Troubles' began. A hospital bed heaped with soil, artificial limbs, a Zimmer frame and a cluster of infants' coffins add an element of theatre to this moving exhibit." Sarah Kent, BATTLE SCARS: The Venice Biennale 1997, Time Out July 16-23 1997 * * * Trusting Inter-Relations Circa magazine, June 1997 Mark Dawes talks about Alastair MacLennan in the Real World