Alastair Mackinven, the musician, artist, painter, writer, and teacher, has died at the age of 53, following a long illness. In recent years Mackinven was best known for his visual art, but since the mid-90s he was a driving force in Country Teasers and The Male Nurse – bands beloved of art world, with the former going on to influence the likes of Fat White Family, while counting Jarvis Cocker, Sebadoh, Royal Trux and Jello Biafra as fans.
In 1996 Mackinven joined The Male Nurse, playing bass with them until they disbanded in the late 90s / early 00s. The Male Nurse – whose recent retrospective compilation was released on artist Lucy McKenzie’s Decemberism label – recorded several Peel Sessions and their 1998 single, ‘My Own Private Patrick Swayze’, was featured in Peel’s Festive Fifty.
The Male Nurse shared several members with Country Teasers, including CT’s founding member BR Wallers (aka The Rebel). Mackinven stepped in for bass player Simon Stephens on a European tour in 1996 before moving onto guitar, playing on the band’s albums Destroy All Human Life (1999, Fat Possum), Science Hat Artistic Cube Moral Nosebleed Empire (2002, In The Red Recordings), Live Album (2005, In The Red Recordings), The Empire Strikes Back (2006, In The Red Recordings) and The Rebel’s Northern Rocks Bear Weird Vegetable, recorded at WFMU (2009, Sacred Bones).
In 2017, The Stallion (Mackinven and Wallers) released The Dark Side of the Wall, a long-planned / often- threatened, interpretation of Pink Floyd’s 1979 album, The Wall, stretched over triple vinyl, and reviewed in Noel Gardner’s New Weird Britain column here.
Mackinven’s work as a visual artist was continuously evolving, and saw him working with a range of techniques – taking in performance, film, painting, and drawing. In recent years he was a lecturer in painting at Slade School of Fine Art and a visiting lecturer at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His death was announced by his UK gallerist, Maureen Paley.
