The British Art Show -

Old Allegiances And New Directions 1979-84

By Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton

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Alastair MacLennan's twelve-hour performance and installation, Birth Death Day, attempted to evoke a psychological and physical awareness of a primal sense of being in his audience. MacLennan, black garbed and blackened from head to foot, moved through the environment he created - a silent temple with the objects of ritual: dead fish, pigs' feet, tails and ears, circles of blood, cups of water, the pungent odour of decay - like a figure from the underworld ritually marking time, making time palpable. MacLennan, like Avis Newman, attempts to recover a pre-symbolic world.
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