#09 | Alex Seton
LoveArt is pleased to present the ninth iteration of our nano project space, Love[f]Art, with Australian sculptor Alex Seton’s There’s No Place Like Home.
Encompassing sculpture, photography, video and installation, Alex Seton’s artworks playfully sit at the junction of an idea, forcing a choice in the viewer as a litmus test of their own disposition. Best known for marble carving that paradoxically exploits classic marble to highlight contemporary issues, his work uses the chemistry and properties of marble as a poetic device to contemplate the problematic relationship between the individual and society.
In-conversation with Alex Seton available via Apple Podcasts here or Vimeo below.
EXHIBITION INFO
ALEX SETON
My Impeccable Search History (The Waterfall)
2022
14 handheld devices, iPhone/iPads and iPods. Looped videos, infinite, chipboard panel
125 x 70 cm
The Store of All Knowledge (The Bookshed)
2022
Inkjet pigment on cotton rag
50 x 37 cm each, 2 prints
118 x 37 cm overall
Edition of 3 + 2AP
The Sawdust Short Drop Throne
2020
Wombeyan (Gundungurra) Pilbara Green (Nyamal) marble, National Geographic magazines 1977- 1990, stainless steel bucket
104 x 40 x 55 cm
(marble pallet not displayed)
Actual Virtual 16-22
2022 Various marbles, polyester adhesive Marble list: Wombeyan marble (NSW) from the traditional lands of the Gundungurra people; Pilbara Green (WA), Pilbara Red (WA) from the traditional lands of the Nyamal people; Australian Emperador (QLD), Bianca Mist ( QLD), Black Ice (QLD), Champagne White (QLD), Black Ice (Qld) from the traditional land of the Wakaman people; Badglio and Italian Statuario from Italy
Dimensions variable
The Waterhole
2022
Pilbara Green (Nyamal) marble
3 x 115 x 45 cm
Alex Seton There’s No Place Like Home is an installation that brings together several works from the artist’s four previous exhibitions that collectively contemplate memory, forgetting and loss. In this intimate setting, Seton (re)presents works that tell his personal memories of growing up off-grid in the bush near the Wombeyan Caves.
The Sawdust Short Drop Throne (2020) is a faithful reproduction of the original plywood shortdrop sawdust toilet located in the woodshed on the artist’s family property. Carefully recreated in unique Australian marbles, the sculpture replicates the existing, still working toilet. The viewer is invited to sit upon the throne to contemplate a poor digital simulacrum of the actual view and sounds from the outdoors of Guineacor Creek, My Impeccable Search History (The Waterfall) (2022). Reproduced on fourteen second hand iPads and iPhones is various looped footage of the waterfall in flood, captured over many years apart, though shown cascading in unison, as if existing in one moment.
Further contemplation can be found in two photographs of the family book shed, The Store of All Knowledge (The Bookshed) (2022), which play on the simple game of spot the difference. Upon the ground sits a suite of unnatural river stones, Actual Virtual 16-22 (2022), their remarkable artificiality reflecting a human centric and modified view of nature and its otherness.
Alongside these works Seton debuts a new sculpture, The Waterhole (2022), created in the same Pilbara Green marble as The Sawdust Short Drop Throne. Inspired by a rare break in the Guineacor Creek that left behind an idyllic oxbow catchment, The Waterhole marks a poignant reminder of the significance placed on water conservation throughout rural Australia. While at first glance the surface may appear an unassuming substitute for the usual bathroom countertop, upon closer inspection the droplets that pepper the wet sink area reveal themselves to be carved in stone. Each droplet can be read as tiny monuments to the precious commodity of the drought-stricken years witnessed by the bush of the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.
For Seton, the act of carving is an act of forgetting, as it is a selective act of removal to uncover the remaining object for presentation. Weaving impressions from unreliable memories and moments from the artist’s own childhood, There’s No Place Like Home creates a gentle eulogy to loss itself.
Alex Seton would like to acknowledge the exhibition was inspired by the traditional lands of the Gundungurra people.
LOVE[f]ART #09 | Alex Seton In-Conversation
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Seton lives and works in Sydney. Solo exhibitions include The Great Escape, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery (Goulburn, 2020); Alex Seton: The Island, Newcastle Art Gallery (2017, Newcastle); As of Today, Australian War Memorial (2014-15, Canberra), Last Resort, touring McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery and Linden Centre for Contemporary Art (2014-15), Roughing Out, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre (2013, Sydney), Six More, Australian War Memorial (2012, Canberra) and Elegy on Resistance, ARTHK12 (2012, Hong Kong). Recent group exhibitions include Safe Space, Grafton Regional Gallery, Maitland Regional Gallery, Devonport Regional Gallery (2020), Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, Latrobe Regional Gallery, New England Regional Art Museum, University of Sunshine Coast Gallery (2021) [forthcoming]; Young & Free | An Australian Discourse, Bega Valley Regional Gallery (2017); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2016); Contour 556, Canberra Public Art Festival (2016); Sealed Section, Artbank, Sydney (2014-15); Gifted Artists: Donations by Patrick Corrigan AM, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2014); Conflict: Contemporary Responses to War, University of Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2014); and Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2014); and Australia: Contemporary Voices, The Fine Art Society Contemporary (2013, London) and Gravity of Sculpture: Part II, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs (2013, New York). Seton has been the recipient of a number of prizes, such as the Prometheus Visual Arts Prize (2009) and the People’s Choice Award for the Helen Lempriere Sculpture Award (2006), as well as being a finalist in the Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2013, 2016). In 2021, The Australian War Memorial awarded Seton the major Sufferings of War and Service commission. His large-scale installation For Every Drop Shed in Anguish will be launched in the Sculpture Garden in 2023. His work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian War Memorial, Newcastle Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, the Danish Royal Art Collection, Copenhagen, and Alnoba Art Park New Hampshire, USA, and numerous other private and public collections.
Seton is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf (Sydney, Singapore).