Alex Allan

This work is available to view online or by request.
This work is framed in a wood tray frame. It is unglazed.

Changing Ideas Award
What began as a chance fascination with the historical layers of colour choice by previous human inhabitants of various spaces has evolved over the last 15 years into a response focusing on the chemical leaching of our lives into the earth. With nearly 50 billion litres of paint produced globally each year, and with acrylic resin compound formulations increasingly dominating production, the thought of where all this material will eventually end up, namely the water table, can easily fill one with dread and despair. For those of us who are highly susceptible to overthinking and catastrophising, these facts could throw us into a deep spiral; endlessly scrutinising the material minutiae that surrounds us.
Much like the lichens that creep into our abandoned spaces, the first responders of nature’s fightback against our millennia of abuse, the act of capturing those thoughts, the scraps of paint from heading to landfill, and turning them into something positive is one of the ways I have found to deal with such doomsday thinking. Using this would-be-waste material to create topographical studies, which mimic the flow and motion of the natural landscape and the crushing force of continuous geological activity, is a sculptural oxymoron that reads as equally pleasing and disturbing.
We have a collective responsibility to care for our environment and to live with consideration for the impact our actions will have long after we are gone. - the artist