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The Listenting Post (detail), 2021, Molong marble, stainless steel, 185 x 28 x 22 cmAlex Seton’s Platform exhibition is comprised of four real, physical sculptures, and four others that exist in Augmented Reality. Together they form the artist’s ‘Personal Monument’ series: a body of work that continues Seton’s explorations of classical statuary and public monuments, but does so in a way that shifts the established emphasis towards something more personal and private.
Seton’s work takes sculptural ideas that are often seen on a large scale and compresses them for individual consumption. He works with raw hewn blocks of marble (in this case the Australian Wombeyan and Molong varieties) carving out partial appendages that protrude from different, textured surfaces. The resulting effect lands ambiguously between a figure trapped in the stone, and an animated stone-like figure.
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The fact that these works are reminiscent of public works of art, yet are built on a personal scale allows Seton to create a more intimate narrative. These kneeling, fragmentary figures resist the grand gestures of the historically powerful with their intimate humour and anthropomorphised boulders. These figures are partly representative of the often overlooked and marginalised, who are rarely immortalised in the public square. In the eternal stasis of disadvantage, stone emphasises and bears witness to their existence.
Running parallel to this is the notion that these figures, suspended in the stone, are toying with the history of more traditional sculpture as well as more contemporary notions of figuration. They are examples of an artist not just engaging with his audience and contemporary society, but one who is doing so while examining the history of the medium in which he works.
Despite the aforementioned emphasis on the private, Seton likes the idea that these works, due to their AR component, could find a home in public spaces too. Whilst such spaces supposedly reflect our shared values, the art they house is often incongruous with the voice of the public now. The Augmented Reality features return the work to the people, allowing them to digitally place a statue wherever they choose, ultimately bridging the gap between public and private.
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Physical Artworks
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Augmented Reality Artworks
Available by commission in sizes small or large - please enquire for more information -
Alex Seton
Toppling the Monument, 2021This sculpture strains to upend itself, predicting its inevitable irrelevance. Monuments with built in obsolescence is perhaps not such a bad idea. All the AR pieces are created as if out of various Australian marbles, eschewing the traditional memorial Italian marbles. This is a meaty fleshy Pilbara Red marble from Western Australia, and it looks particularly intimidating scaled up over 800% and walked under.
Click here to use AR (accessible via mobile only) -
Alex Seton
A Question of Balance, 2021Teetering on the brink of falling over, as if the figure is in full tuck in the block, hands gently keeping the work from tipping point. Like yoga for the modern monument. IRL the Pilbara Green is my favourite marble, its tones reminiscent of the gum trees of the Australian bush.
Click here to use AR (accessible via mobile only) -
Alex Seton
Looking Good, Feeling Good, 2021Alex's favourite of the AR pieces, this elegant Yass Black block glistens with a vanity that all monuments undoubtably possess on some level. That it embraces and knows it, is cause for celebration and is refreshingly honest.
Click here to use AR (accessible via mobile only) -
Alex Seton
A Classic Twist, 2021The classical device of contrapposto or counterpoise, when used in statuary, is usually a figure standing with its weight on one foot, body in an mannered twist. This is taken to extremes here, the free leg jutting out like Angelina’s right leg at the 2012 Oscars meme. Created in Australian Bianco Mist, the work teases the classic white marble of historical statuary.
Click here to use AR (accessible via mobile only) -
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About Alex Seton
Alex Seton is an artist working in sculpture, photography, video and installation, best known for his use of marble carving. Throughout his practice he has used the techniques and languages of classical statuary and monument, playing with, inverting and exaggerating them to create works that reflect on the contemporary world. Recent work engages directly with contemporary political issues, such as Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers, and questions of conflict and nationhood. Through his work, Seton attempts to grapple the grander narrative through a humanist lens.
Seton has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions include The Great Escape, Goulburn Regional Gallery (2020); Once There, Sullivan+Strumpf, Singapore (2019); Cargo, Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney (2018); Monument, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2017); Alex Seton: The Island, Newcastle Art Gallery (2017); Someone Else's Problem, Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks (2015); As of Today, Australian War Memorial, Canberra (2014-15), Last Resort, touring McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery, Langwarrin, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne & Rockhampton Art Gallery, Rockhampton (2014-15), Refoulement, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney (2014); and Roughing Out, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, Sydney (2013).
Recent group exhibitions include touring regional exhibition Safe Space (2018-2021); Hope Dies Last, Art at the End of Optimism; Gertrude Contemporary (2019); Love, Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre (2019); Art Basel Hong Kong, Sullivan+Strumpf, (2019); 2019 Annual Group Show, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney; All We Can’t See, Yellow House, Sydney (2018); I Was Here, Fremantle Arts Centre, Western Australia (2017); Less than – art and reductionism, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane (2017); Contemporary Talents prize winners exhibition, Fondation François Schneider, Wattwiller, France (2017); Countercurrents, Samstag Museum, Adelaide (2017); 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).
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The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
Alex Seton's Chosen CharityThe Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is a charity that provides food and material aid, healthcare, and other support services to those in need. It's an Australia-based institution that takes a holistic approach to empowering disadvantaged indiviudals, giving them the structural support they need to get their feet on the ground.
