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Introducing Alex Pollard

The Venice Biennale is considered to be the most significant contemporary art exhibition in the world. ‘It’s definitely the best thing that has ever happened to me’, says Alex Pollard, who is one of four artists selected to represent Scotland.

So what sets Glasgow-based Pollard’s work apart from the rest? He doesn’t focus on one style, he explains, preferring to create a show in which the different works bounce off each other. And it’s clear that he enjoys dabbling with different media and forms. Of the five pieces in the Venice show, it is his sculptures that really grab your attention. Made from plaster, they are painted to look like measuring rulers, and are manipulated to form different shapes.

Large Beast, which resembles a dinosaur, stands on an office table, designed to mimic a display cabinet – ‘So that you think it’s in the natural history museum’, he says.

The large wall frieze Wall Drawing is made using the same methods, but this time it has been moulded to resemble hands drawing on a wall. Pollard says, ‘It’s like artists’ tools vandalising space.’

So why rulers? ‘I like the idea of transforming an everyday tool that I use in the studio into something completely different and unusual, like a Jurassic herbivore.’