Mostyn
Alex Duncan
CYFORDRAETH
RAISED BEACH
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 it issues that it rigorously explores.
Concentrating on issues of the environment and ecology, Duncan's work transports situations into the gallery space that he has encountered while walking on the streets of his native Swansea and the rocky coves of nearby Gower peninsula. His work, in this way, follows a history of artists using the walk and the idea of the walk as a starting point for art making, responding to their local area and in particular the sea through their work.While Duncan's work does indeed point to this rich history of art production, it also speaks of art's fundamental ability to question the world around us, making the apparently familiar, unfamiliar.
His solo exhibition at MOSTYN is composed of five works. Puddle is a series comprised of a number of photographs of street puddles which appear to take on the scale of miniature floods. Battersea Tide Line also plays with perspective and makes apparent the resulting affect of the sea of which are commonly overlooked. Raised Beach and Thames Chattering induce 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 polyeurethane foam detritus call into question their very indestructible make-up and subsequent environmental affect. Addressing the context of Mostyn more directly is a work tltled Hard Rain. Taking residence in a window at the front of the gallery, the work suggests relentless rain.
"When I look back at work I have made I see running intrigues and interests, intuitive engagements that I dont really think about at the time but seem to always be there... I tend to veer towards sculptural work as I find its ability to affect different senses more alluring and how we deal with objects spatially - to feel things with your hands, the weight or lightness of an object, and its smell.
Photography and drawing interest me as a way of capturing and re-presenting reality and situations, often as I am out exploring. Dualities often appear through discovery, that of wonder and that of foreboding, for example with the Puddle series there seems a sense of a miniature flood, the object (puddle) itself seems like it has so much potential. It forms perspective as if you, the viewer, were floating out at sea with the water lapping your chin - half in, half out.
The sense of ecology is also present throughout my work, puddles created from the concreting of the land, foam pebbles washing up in the rocky coves of Gower (an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) cast offs from ocean tankers that break down and become the very fabric of what we inhale and consume. I'm interesting in experiencing great movements and forces, to see their traces on the land and feel a part of something massive and minute at the same time."
Alex Duncan 2012
