Over two months, the harmony and integrity of the interior space was constantly refined, creating a resonant union of solid forms.
The walls of two rooms were splattered with red paint, which served as a reminder of Lawrie’s studio at Filthy MacNasty’s, dubbed the abattoir of art, by writer Alexander Strickland-Clarke.
In Song, figuration has been completely eclipsed by all consuming abstraction. Positive and negative forms are interchanged as the paintings appear as glimpses of the void on starkly visceral walls.
Lawrie integrates the artwork conceptually and physically into the site and its context, much the same as a plasma screen is installed into the fabric of a building to extend the user's body and mind to vast exterior networks.
Spontaneous splashes of red paint provide a more expressive, ephemeral contrast to the solid forms, while the floor grounds the viewer in an echo of the canvases.
Sing a Song of Sixpence was the first show by Alastair Lawrie in which no part of the installation was offered for sale. After the commercial success of Prospective, this was possibly a deliberate move to confound the commodification of his work.
Although Lawrie denies any political intention, the show took place in the immediate aftermath of the second Gulf War.
