Exhibitions

Venue: The Changing Room, Stirling

Dates: 18th September–30th October 2004

Preview: 16th September 2004, 6pm

Press Release

The Changing Room

ALEX FROST 1973 16 September – 30 October

1973 is a continuation of The Changing Room’s ongoing programme strand commissioning solo exhibitions by artists based in Scotland at significant points in their careers. The work in 1973 has been developed over the past year by Alex Frost, with our unique gallery in mind.

1973 presents new sculptures and drawings that continue the artist’s interest in a kind of impure or inbred Minimalist. 1973 as well as being the artist’s birth year is also an indicator – pointing to many of the references within this body of work.

The key to this implied theme is in the selection of four framed drawings depicting scenes form the artist’s studio; incidental or accidental moments in the making of other artworks, such as a spillage or slides of previous work lying on a table. These works operate like banal biographical sketches. The drawings are modular, located on coloured grids screenprinted onto large sheets of paper. The images are built up over time, with the content reduces to a set of abstract symbols. Despite the mechanics of the process, the mark-making of the artists is still clearly evident.

An autobiographical imprint continues in a set of sleek ceramic vases shaped by a life-size template of the artist’s profile. The vases are arranged on plinths and set to rotate imperceptibly slowly by hidden motors, creating the potential of something happening over time. Different devices and processes are evident in the other works in the show, such as in the window space, where a mechanical press used for ceramics generates an extruded, soft and formless version of Robert Indiana’s emblematic ‘LOVE’ sculpture.

‘The control that Alex Frost exerts over his sculpture betrays a desire to be machine-like as a maker. There are templates or patterns or plans to follow. His work is modular. Things are built up from a number of similar elements. There is repetition. The materials are tools. There is structure then surface. He builds then decorates. What emerges is a whole made up of smaller parts’ from Idea Logic, or Self-made Machine Sculpture by Karla Black commissioned for the publication accompanying the exhibition.