Bruce McLean b.1944
Smoking with self-portrait, 2019
Signed, dated and numbered verso
'Bruce McLean 1958-1963-2019 1/3'
Black and white inkjet photograph. Edition of 3
14 x 14 in, 35.6 x 35.6 cm
Photography by Alexandria Savege
Created specifically for this exhibition, in Stone carving and cigarette Bruce
McLean revisits the figure of Henry Moore. Reimagined from a 1963
photograph taken while at Glasgow School of Art, McLean jokingly plays with
the grandiosity of Moore's sculptures by posing with one of his own works
carved in 1958 - styled after Moore - and a cigarette.
A vital force in contemporary art, in the late 1960s and early 1970s
McLean created multiple series of works dealing with the nature and
meaning of sculpture such as Pose Works for Plinths from 1971. In these
comical performances, originally conceived at the Situation Gallery and later
documented through photography, McLean places himself as one of Moore's
reclining figures.
In Stone carving and cigarette McLean once again subverts the perceived aura
of the artwork. Presenting his Moore-like sculpture as an object that can be
played with instead of revered in a museum, McLean brings the stone carving
back to the physical world of reality. This is something McLean echoes in
an interview stating that, 'Henry Moore made me want to do it: I liked the
volume, the form and the fact that it looked "modern". He didn't try to make
it look like somebody. It looked like what it was. It looked like a sculpture'.
