The art of Alasdair Macintyre

A Short History of Head Wear:
1: The Judas Kiss
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
2: Chamber of Solace?
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, metal, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
3: The Fourth Age
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
4: Head Space
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
5: Hearts and Minds
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
6: Anarchy Alert #13
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
7: Reason and Folly
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
8: The Last Artist
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
9: The New Public Art
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear:
10: The Final Acquisition
Polyurethane resin, polymer clay, wood, card, paper, acrylic paint, plastic.
2006

A Short History of Head Wear

March 4 - 25, 2006

Blacklab Gallery

Warry Street, Brisbane, Australia

(Scroll down to view exhibition in chronological order, titles at left)

Alasdair Macintyre

A Short History of Head Wear by Kris Carlon

Not long ago, Alasdair Macintyre was sleeping in the Abstract Expressionist room at the NGA, now he’s running for his life…

A Short History of Headwear consists of ten dioramas in Macintyre’s signature style, although these new scenarios function more like cinematic stills than autonomous objets d’art. By shifting his focus from stand-alone tableaux to a multi-dimensional and mutually contingent ‘story’, Macintyre has reoriented his practice toward a whole new conceptual framework. With this cinematic turn, each ‘episode’ contributes to an ongoing narrative that, while still present in his earlier work, has never been expressed as explicitly as in this new series. While the earlier work could be seen as set-pieces or plot points on the arc of the ‘little Al’ character’s development, the ten episodes of A Short History of Headwear are not all as dramatic and iconic as earlier pieces. In this new series, each is dependant on those around it to give it meaning, and they do not, by default, present moments of high action. Some present relatively uneventful situations when compared to the action and drama of earlier works. Tension survives though in the knowledge that all is never as it seems in Macintyre’s universe, and through the very episodic nature of this series, each work holds the potential to act as a cliff-hanger or the ‘quiet before the storm’ familiar from thrillers and horror movies.

Macintyre has always drawn on cinematic codes, conventions and clichés, but never as overtly as this, or in this overarching fashion. The difference being that this series is like a cinematic experience via the unfolding of a story over time, as opposed to simply mining film for ‘props’. Gone are the pseudo-specific aliens and robots, now we are confronted with an all-too-familiar and uncomfortably close to home stage upon which to see the drama unfold. The robots and aliens have disappeared, and been replaced by drearily clad everyman figures with empty heads, and sinister, omnipotent businessmen in their ivory towers. The Orwellian aspect to this theatre of paranoia and pursuit is clear, but does Macintyre’s ‘artist’ figure finally welcome his fate as Winston Smith does in 1984? Where has the optimism of Macintyre’s practice gone? Has the burden of control finally taken its toll, or is this simply a rendering of a possible reality? And is this reality so different to our own in any case? A Short History of Headwear is more of a parallel present than a projected future, with markers of our own time and culture evident throughout.

Does this signal the end for ‘little Al’? For art in general? Is that the trophy the ASAK exec gloats over in The Final Acquisition? What other trophies has he accumulated before and what others will come after? Or is this nightmare scenario merely the fitful dream of the overactive imagination curled up under the covers in the NGA? Is this the parallel dimension to the reality of space invaders from earlier work, or is it the other way around? This oscillation between reality and imagination, dream and nightmare, present and future, is the narrative thrust behind many of Macintyre’s adventures. Yet there is a gritty realism to this series that does away with the fantastical and mythical, and which makes the work all the more unsettling because of it. The individual struggle is revealed in the final ‘scene’ to be but one episode of many in an ongoing war against control; an episodic whole that expands and contracts endlessly in each direction (one can imagine ASAK under corporate pursuit from another corporation higher on the food chain as well as ‘little Al’ playing out his own miniature acquisitions). But what happens in the end? Is there a twist? I guess we’ll just have to stay tuned…