TAGS: American Still Life features a selection of about 30 photographic prints from a recent body of work made within the fenced parameters of former American Forces housing projects. Exploring this abandoned area over a number of seasons McClennan discovered a source rich in associations and visual variety. With the graffiti and encroaching nature, as their focus, the images play off notions of high and low art, communication, history and youth culture. The tags, referring to the marks left behind by the graffiti artists, register as a foreign language, so the writing itself takes on the character of drawing as do the plants which interact with those surfaces. “American Still Life”, in this context, suggests a sense of displacement, something familiar yet removed from its roots.