Alexander Duncan
Growing up along the coastline, Alex learnt to observe and understand the continual intertidal flux. How you read the seascape, the immensity and immersiveness of the elements, the intimacy of materiality. He is fascinated about how we place ourselves in these spaces, within the Twenty-First Century anthropocene.
Alex works primarily with sculpture, photography, sought objects, video and drawing. For this current work he has been seeking sea and river worn polyurethane foam 'pebbles'.
These objects wash up in rocky coves or river inlets. Man-made yet sea-worn, they form a perfect simulacra to a pebble. When you pick one up, there is that amazing moment where you just don't know. You're thrown by your misperception until you feel with your hands the absurdness of it all. This idea of the unknown in art and life fascinates him. ‘What is real and what is imitating the real? How do we respond to something that is both, or rather, something that sits between these two diverging states? These are some of the central questions of Alex Duncan's work and issues that it rigorously explores’.
COVE
For this current work I have been seeking sea and river worn polyurethane foam 'pebbles'. These objects wash up in rocky coves or river inlets. Man-made yet sea-worn, they form a perfect simulacra to a pebble. When you pick one up, there is that amazing moment where you just don't know. You're thrown by your misperception until you feel with your hands the absurdness of it all.
This idea of the unknown in art and life fascinates me. Cove induces a double take on part of the viewer, as a collection of washed up beach and river pebbles deceive with their life-like simplicity. Everyday polystyrene and polyurethane foam detritus.
UKYA PROJECTS:
National Biennale: Leicester 2014
