Alasdair Macintyre web page

The art of Alasdair Macintyre

Sanctus: Engaging the Spirit

Alasdair Macintyre is a graduate of the Australian Catholic University and is one of Australia’s foremost emerging sculptors. His work has been exhibited at the NGA and QAG and AGNSW and is in the collections of Toowoomba Regional Gallery, the Gold Coast Regional Gallery, the BBG and QUT Art Museum. This exhibition called Sanctus explores the notion of sainthood and reconstruction.

Since early Christian times, the saints were represented and above all accepted because of the qualities they possessed. They were in essence heroic in their spiritual orientation and action. The word "saint" comes from the Latin Sanctus, meaning "holy". The representation of the saints in sculptural forms was a key innovation of Christian culture that mirrored the classical traditions of Hellenistic culture. Large sculpture was made for use in churches, where it was used in worship and as a visual device assisting in the education of the congregation. What people believed about art became important issues of difference and were at the divide in the church between Orthodox, Catholic and Reformed. Within Western European Art and particularly the Catholic tradition, religious sculpture of the saints adorned cathedrals, civic buildings and homes. It became part of the fabric of the western artistic imagination. Smaller sculptures were used in the practice of "devotio moderna," which allowed people to house their favorite saint in their home and enabled the sick and elderly to pray to a cherished image.

For Alasdair, his small sculptured saints occupy centre stage in his imagination. He speaks of as a child, having a small plastic saint blessed and the kitsch sculpture attaining a fresh order of reality and shaping his own “devotio moderna” which also extended to his Star Wars Super-heroes. Thus, this exhibition explores the subject of the sacred and sainthood through tableaus of small sculptures. At its heart is the notion of sacrament, the mysterious transaction were the ordinary becomes sacred and the sacred becomes ordinary. The attribution of sacrament to a thing or a person is at its very essence the work of the mysterious divine, a saint or an artist / priest. Thus these are not just quasi-religious objects but become devotio, meditations, moments of sacred play…they involve deeply resonating memory and connotation involving unfathomable semiotic play and symbolism. Alasdair says, “1995 (the year at ACU) was a watershed year for me, where I embarked upon a post-graduate art teaching degree, and experienced several “epiphany” type situations, on various different levels at that time. For one, I discovered the writings of Joseph Campbell, as well as delving deeper into my own Catholic faith. I can pinpoint however, the precise moment that I embraced the notion, and gained the confidence to be an artist. My parents had returned from overseas, and I had asked them to track down several films on VHS for me, one of them being Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew”.

That night I lay on my studio floor and watched that particular film, and it was an extraordinary moment of epiphany, which I cannot adequately describe. My self-awareness circuit was suddenly engaged, and the only other thing I can say is that from that moment forth, my course was set. I guess it was a combination of Joseph Campbell’s concept of “follow your bliss” with my own beliefs and abilities”.

This body of work is also about reconstruction. The image of the wreckage of the cathedral and the possibility of the creative enterprise are fundamental concerns. William Golding’s The Spire charts a similar myth of a cathedral construction. Jocelin, Dean of the Cathedral, is captured by his calling and the construction of the spire. The cathedral spire points at heaven and aspirations of artistic ambition but has its foundations in frailty of the human condition. Finally, the spire stands, but at great cost. Like Golding, Alasdair deals with contemporary society without substantial mythic foundation, the notion of a loss of innocence, and a quest for “symbols of substance” and “meaningful myths” that will sustain the spirit. As such, Alasdair’s sculptures while abounding in layered semiotic, iconographic and iconological mystery are at the same time inviting the joyful innocence of simple devotion and belief. Many of the stories and images of the saints that Alasdair alludes to are hidden in the pastiche avalanche of our post-Christian culture. While that may be the condition of much contemporary art experience, art historians like James Elkins argue that we are still attracted to art that appears as a puzzle. Looking at Alasdair’s works as puzzles, we encounter works that contain mystery that seems to be beyond the limits of contemporary art theory to map. Alasdair challenges so many of the well charted binaries of class, gender and power and chooses to explore the “sacred”. Is it still possible for such a category to exist? Is it possible to still have a discourse about the sacred and the profane? Sanctus invites us to encounter the possibility of an imagination that is open again to the sacred and the ambiguity of the human condition. In Sanctus we encounter intersections of a pre-modern preoccupation, the modernist project and postmodern play. Is reconstruction possible? How you approach these works will depend on what you think about the nature of the human condition, imagination and art and its power to engage the spirit.

Dr Lindsay Farrell

Dr Lindsay Farrell is Head of Arts, School of Arts & Sciences, Australian Catholic University, McAuley at Banyo, Brisbane.