LIE TO LAY

120 hour non-stop performance/installation as part of New Work Newcastle ’86, with Projects UK.

3 – 7 March 1986

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‘MacLennan was offered a large old barn in a suburb, a ‘displaced’ space. It had two levels, the middle space higher than on the sides. Having set up rows of beds with regularly positioned bales of hay on each bed he continued working throughout on both levels: rearranging, turning beds, dismantling them, causing disarray, tossing bales around, placing and ‘replacing’ stacks of clothes. The balloons were not properly inflated, as if to suggest something had been used and gone. The clothing was from children and adults, male and female. The deformed sound communicated disillusion and humour too. MacLennan told me that he was concerned with the state of Health Care in this country, about people getting ill, needing care…’

Text from ‘Alastair MacLennan: Is No’, ed. Stephen Snoddy, 1988.