Alastair & Fleur Mackie: Selected Works is the inaugural exhibition of the artist’s collaborative practice. Although they have worked together for a long time, and have exhibited widely and internationally, Projects Twenty Two is pleased to present the first public display of their work as artist-duo. It takes stock of the journeys and navigations of their fastidious, penetrating approach to art making, through materials such as reclaimed fishing line, sub-fossilised oak, and milk teeth.

One Mile Line (2024) is made of monofilament fishing line, recovered from the Atlantic shoreline in tangled clumps, methodically and laboriously unknotted by hand, straightened, and then carefully re-knotted to create a new singular line, a mile in length. Displayed on a frame and appearing as a circuit, it echoes the cyclical nature of the artist’s practice. They work in a continual rhythm, returning to specific coastal locations to source material, adjust and remodel. This is repeated until the objective is reached – a simple target offering structure to process. Monofilament is also used as an explorative tool and, in a similar way, each artwork here is the result of a rigorous search, a delving into and beneath, both physically and conceptually.

This sense of reconfiguration is also seen in their Mount’s Bay Stool (2022). It is carved from sub-fossilised oak; a tree that died two and a half thousand years BCE, a time when the Great Pyramid of Giza and Stonehenge were still under construction. It lived in Cornwall’s Mount’s Bay, once a dense woodland before being claimed by the sea. Preserved in oxygen-free peat, buried deep under sand, and submerged by the Atlantic Ocean, it surfaced following a storm in 2020. The stool nods to the coast as a place of contemplation, and here we are prompted to ponder whether its value exists in its material or form. Here they are in spiritual union.

The series 4 Stacks (2024) is composed of photographic prints of sculptures created from found trawl floats. Recovered along a two-mile stretch of coast, they are then stacked and documented in situ; some fifty-one floats in total. The goal was to utilise every float found within walking distance from the artist’s home, determined by what they could physically manage, a process that took place across a year. Riffing on the legacies of Land Art, although these non-functional and totem-like structures are caught in a moment, in time and a specific context, the materials have likely travelled from far and wide and speak of so much more than their physicality. Nothing is added, rather a reevaluation of what is already there.

A second naturally occurring material used is the soft calcium punctuations of cuttlebone regularly found on the sands. It is with this that Complex System 123 & 124 (2016) are made, processed into components that conform to underlying natural geometry. Pieced together they create two opposing surfaces, the consolidated segments appearing as positive and negative, with the subtle intricacies of the material being revealed.

It is this interest in earth-derived material, but also ideas of transience that are discernible in The Things I Tell You (2023), an artwork a decade in the making. Created in collaboration with the artist’s daughter, the Tand-fé (the Tooth Fairy, or literally ‘tooth fee’), a dentist, and a Lapidarist – a cutter and polisher of gemstones. As each tooth was shed, they were sent off to be carved and polished into beads, before being returned to the studio. This work, although more autobiographical, applies that same approach of reinterpretation. All these artworks build a dialogue with the circumstances and stories of material origin, connecting across time, they offer a unique commentary on the intersection of art, ecology and human experience.

Alastair & Fleur Mackie: Selected Works is curated by Dr Matt Retallick.

Photos: Ian Kingsnorth.