Carving Success: Alex Seton on Marble, Art Logistics, and Career Advice

[00:00:01] Alex Seton: I was just grey the whole time. And just, like, a little powder keg like Pigpen in Charlie Brown. I was just Pigpen. I was just that guy. Still am, really. It wasn't that healthy. But I was manic. I was obsessed.



[00:00:13] Alex Seton: When you take work outdoors, it's a very specific thing. One, you can lose it to nature straight away. Nature is just more spectacular and larger. So anything you do in the studio you think is huge, take it outdoors and it looks miniscule, just vanishes in the landscape. So scale is this huge challenge to sculpture.



[00:00:30] Alex Seton: they violate artists rights all the time. They don't pay them well, or they ask them to somehow compromise their artwork. They're the biggest sinners around. Calling them into the account is one of the hardest things to do, because you still have to professionally work with them.



[00:00:46] Alex Seton: You need to be in the scene that you're in. You need to be part and present with it, and it's very hard to be represented when you're not actively present on that side of the globe. And it's possible, but it's much harder, and particularly for a sculptor,





[00:01:05] Anastasia: Welcome to the installation art podcast, the world's number one and only podcast about installation art and the people who work with it.



[00:01:14] Anastasia: In each episode, you will hear about the joys and challenges of the medium and get an exclusive behind the scenes look at the career and process of internationally renowned guests. I am your host, Anastasia Parmson.



[00:01:28] Anastasia: My guest today is Australian artist Alex Seaton, best known for his remarkable marble sculptures that challenge viewers expectations of the material.



[00:01:39] Anastasia: Alex has a unique ability to transform hard stone into soft, everyday objects, creating illusions that undermine assumptions while also addressing contemporary political issues. His work has been exhibited globally, from Australia to India and Europe. He was also the first Australian artist to win the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2020.



[00:02:02] Anastasia: This episode is a little different than the usual. Alex has a very unique perspective on being a mid career artist in Australia while also showing overseas with a lot of international work experience.



[00:02:16] Anastasia: We discuss everything from the logistics of working with marble and heavy materials, to the challenges of creating large scale and public art, to his upcoming projects that involve moving overseas.



[00:02:32] Anastasia: I'm very excited to share these fascinating behind the scenes topics and stories, so let's get into it. Here is my today's guest, Alex Seton.





[00:02:44] Anastasia: Thank you again, Alex, for coming today and joining me here. It's absolutely lovely to have you. Tell me Do you have a favorite quote?



[00:02:55] Alex Seton: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on here.



[00:02:57] Alex Seton: I have a lot of quotes that I like, but I do like the Edna Vincent Millay poem: "my candle burns at both ends. It will not last a night, but ahh my friends and ahh my foes. It casts a lovely light."



[00:03:09] Anastasia: What does it mean to you?



[00:03:11] Alex Seton: Well, I'm someone that wrangles time out of every day. Up early, bed very, very, very late. I don't sleep very much.



[00:03:19] Anastasia: So how's your work life balance?



[00:03:21] Alex Seton: Terrible. Seriously. Terrible. Yeah.



[00:03:25] Anastasia: Yeah.



[00:03:26] Alex Seton: I think it's not good. You gotta leave room for things in your life, but I mean, for me, it's a focus right now on friends and yeah, make sure I get enough rest as well. I'll be really honest in this interview.



[00:03:38] Anastasia: Yeah, that's great. Perfect.



[00:03:40] Alex Seton: I'm, no, I don't think I'm managing it. I think there's periods where you can, and I have done so right now. I'm not managing. I'm just throwing myself at it Hmm.



[00:03:49] Anastasia: Do you have a secret hobby or interest?



[00:03:52] Alex Seton: Secret hobby.



[00:03:53] Alex Seton: I don't have a really secret. As in, I love to cook and I will cook and have dinner parties for my a lot of artist friends. I particularly love working with seafood. I used to restore a lot of artwork and I think in another life I would have been an art restorer and I love I'm a big fan of just artwork in general.



[00:04:13] Alex Seton: And so I can fall in love with old pictures and, objets d'art and things like that. And I love not seeing them slip away and being neglected. I like looking after things.



[00:04:23] Anastasia: Love that. Okay, well, let's get into it. Tell me quickly a bit about your growing up and how you came to discover art for yourself.



[00:04:36] Alex Seton: okay, that's diving right in the deep end. To start at the beginning would be to talk about. Having very interesting parents who were already alternative for their day. My mum and her family were from Egypt. They'd fled the authoritarian regime of Abdel Nasser in the late 60s to come to Australia, like so many of the, um, Egyptian Greek diaspora of that time. And they were welcome to places like Canada, Switzerland, France and Australia. And my mother was the youngest of the lot, and she followed her mother here. Who followed her favorite son.



[00:05:09] Alex Seton: It was a big family and they didn't want to be punch card programming rockets for Abdel Nasser, and so they fled.



[00:05:14] Alex Seton: Which is all by means to say is that they were all in some form of early programming and technology. So my mother meets a young mathematician at a esoteric book party and they, they quickly fall in love and get married and have four boys in quick succession. And they're working in technology.



[00:05:33] Alex Seton: My dad's working for CSIRO. They were very heavily influenced by a couple of different things, the Californian do it yourself movement of the early seventies, which is inspired in turn by a kind of early American colonial transcendentalism, communing with nature, as some sort of essentialist truth. Of a new respect for nature rather than communities. I think that was part of that colonial awe of the American landscape that's so well written about. Things like Thoreau's Walden Pond was a huge influence.



[00:06:01] Alex Seton: And so they see Australia in maybe similar terms. I mean for my mum, obviously the no bombs overhead and peace and prosperity being a big thing for their family. And an opportunity to get away and off grid from technology and television, and this is the 70s.



[00:06:18] Alex Seton: They found a, a small little hobby plot, which is only 88 acres. And it is off grid and they build out there to the golden ratio, this small little hut just by hand, no electric tools or anything. And it has a waterfall nearby and they build a bookshed and they said, there's your education. The books were the huge influence. Books on the Egyptian pharaohs, a lot of sculpture of the Renaissance from my father, but a lot of science fiction as well. Science fiction being pivotal and important influence for me, because it asked questions of, okay, if we were to extrapolate from this idea, if we were to take it to its nth degree, what would our society look like? I get hugely influenced by those books, that sculpture, and very importantly, playing Out of boredom, in the bush. Because we don't have television. We have a little bit of radio and that's it. Playing in the bush. There's clay from the creek. There's dead wood from the trees to play with as material, just making. And the act of making quickly consumes me.



[00:07:13] Alex Seton: But very importantly, there's a marble quarry just over the way. And so when I was eight years old, my father takes his wood chisels back off me and says, stop blunting them on this marble, here's your first, Hammer and stone chisel. And I never really had a chance from there. And that's, that's a really simple version of events. My brother's brilliant, he's like gets us all academic scholarships to a good Jesuit preschool, private Catholic school here. The Jesuits here at St. Ignatius College just looked at me and I was saying, I'm gonna be an artist. I was full of precociousness. I don't know where I got the idea of what that should be, but it set in very early.



[00:07:46] Anastasia: You somehow knew you were going to be an artist?



[00:07:48] Alex Seton: Yeah, yeah.



[00:07:49] Anastasia: Is Anyone else in your family an artist?



[00:07:52] Alex Seton: Yes, there's an actor there's an industrial designer, my brothers, and there's also a very successful entrepreneurial and very creative businessman. All my brothers are really interesting and intriguing people, and they're very clever. But I'm the one that's saying, I want to be the visual artist. Like, that's me.



[00:08:05] Alex Seton: And yeah, I started sculpting just as a matter of habit. And of course I was doing it at the end of every day, but I love theater, I love doing set design. I do summer schools at NIDA as a set designer but I drop out of there and say, I want to go to College of Fine Arts. I want to learn. And I didn't do fine arts because I went around. I was also very attentive and studious and talked to a lot of people. And every graduate I met was totally put off their own practice at that time. And so I enrolled in Art Theory and History at College of Fine Arts. And that degree enabled me to work alongside theoreticians, doing my history catching up. You know, any of the libraries down Southern Tablelands, it all ended in their contemporary art history, in maybe Jackson Pollock as the most contemporaneous reference there.



[00:08:50] Anastasia: Oh really!?



[00:08:51] Alex Seton: And so I was excited to like, learn what has been made since. Because obviously it was a long journey in a lifetime. And Fine Arts at the time also enabled me to do a huge tract of practical classes as well. With some really great artists like Brian O'Dwyer and, yeah, there's a whole lot of them. Extraordinary in that particular generation.



[00:09:11] Alex Seton: And fellow classmates were people like Alexie Glass, formerly a Director of Artspace, or Russell Storer, formerly from the Chief Curators of the National Gallery. Really intelligent, very high powered year. So we all pushed each other a lot to achieve and be gunning it.



[00:09:27] Alex Seton: And, and, at the end of every Evening in the artist studios, artists like Sean and Claire were still working back late and they're successful today. So it was almost a proof of concept of you know, you really need to apply yourself. Keep in mind This is late 90s so they're still scaring the shit



[00:09:43] Alex Seton: out of every art student saying: Only five percent t of you are going to achieve any sort of commercial or practical success in this... You know, you're like, ugh! It's the usual like scare the shit



[00:09:53] Alex Seton: out of the students in order to make sure that they're committed.



[00:09:56] Alex Seton: But, that was not our issue back then. We all just really wanted to do it. And so it was a very high powered year, I think. And yeah, I was very much driven to just keep doing it by any means necessary. So I knew it was going to be difficult. You know, I had parents who couldn't give any financial support but they were very emotionally supportive.



[00:10:15] Alex Seton: You know, when I told my dad at 16, all right, I'm definitely going to be a visual artist. He was like, Oh, to be a visual artist is to be self employed. Let me show you how to invoice.



[00:10:24] Anastasia: you Wow! That's...



[00:10:25] Alex Seton: Great advice. Like really good advice.



[00:10:27] Anastasia: I mean, yeah!



[00:10:27] Alex Seton: It's come in more useful than almost anything else that I've ever learned ever.



[00:10:31] Anastasia: No kidding. Yeah. They should teach that at art school, let's be honest!



[00:10:35] Alex Seton: Yeah. And it's a really simple skill, but once you get into the habit of it, you're not afraid of it. You know, it's not, it's not a thing that overwhelms. It's just part of protecting the small business that is your art practice. So that you can be responsible for it very carefully. And I really appreciated that.



[00:10:50] Alex Seton: But not being actively discouraged, like I've met in a lot of, Very creative adults who didn't pursue art careers. Like I went to a high school reunion recently. I remember in my classes there were some really brilliant potential budding artists who never did pursue it, never continued.



[00:11:07] Alex Seton: But they had active discouragement in their life. There's a big difference at a certain stage in your life, you know. I didn't have that, and I was super determined, I looked every adult in the eye and said, I'm gonna do this.



[00:11:17] Anastasia: And you have!



[00:11:18] Alex Seton: Turns out, as long as you're determined, nobody stops you.



[00:11:22] Anastasia: So At that time though, you weren't really working with stone or, or stone carving. How did you then come back to your childhood hobby, so to speak?



[00:11:34] Alex Seton: You're right. I was just totally immersed as a student of everything. I was doing internships at Christie's. I was working at Fox studios to make a living and pay for the tuition. You know, a lot of these students in the late nineties were working at Fox studios in the prop departments to work on things like Lord of the Rings, Matrix, films like that.



[00:11:51] Anastasia: Did you actually work on Lord of the Rings?



[00:11:54] Alex Seton: I've carvedd so many Elvish runes, I can tell you! You have no idea whether any of it makes it in there or not.



[00:11:59] Anastasia: yeah,



[00:12:00] Alex Seton: But I did carve a lot.



[00:12:01] Anastasia: I'm a major Tolkien fan so I'm really jealous. I was so dreaming of doing something for the movies.



[00:12:09] Alex Seton: Ah, I was overjoyed when I found out what we were working on. Because I was working for a company. My parents read us the entirety of The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings around the fire outside, under the stars and in voices.



[00:12:22] Anastasia: Perfect!



[00:12:23] Alex Seton: I was obsessed. I would have done it for free probably. Thankfully they paid me. So that paid tuition.



[00:12:29] Alex Seton: I did antique restoration as well. I really dropped into that. I read the entirety of the British Museum's books on conservation of objects. I decided to limit it to a material that I knew I was kind of interested in.



[00:12:40] Alex Seton: But I was doing performance art, really performance art, I was doing sound work, I was also painting, drawing, all that sort of thing, and sculpting.



[00:12:49] Alex Seton: But yeah, you're right, I didn't obsess about stone but when thinking about particularly the performance side of things, which I did love. I think, essentially, the premise of it, at the time eluded me.



[00:13:02] Alex Seton: As in, how could I expound upon my ideas in a way that the audience wouldn't feel like they have to overcome either my attitude or my personhood. So the proxy of a three dimensional object quickly became the thing. It's like, well, let people interact in their own time, let them choose it, let them see it and inspect it with their physical body, physically engage with the work and then close meaning by everything they bring to it as well. The nature of that interaction.



[00:13:28] Alex Seton: And so I was heavily influenced by Liam Gillick the Irish American artist who did a lot of works about artist, object and audience. And that interaction is sort of a game theory and stuff like that. My work looks nothing like that, but I was really enamored with those concepts.



[00:13:44] Alex Seton: Because it's performance, it's all a performance. Keep in mind, I'm a student of my era. I'm embracing a kind of postmodern take on it, a very self aware take of what it is that you're doing, your activities. Either the art object itself or obsessions with the banal.



[00:14:00] Alex Seton: They're all very late 90s concerns, kind of getting over maybe the worst excesses of modernism. And at that time I was thinking you can turn the hierarchy of materials on its head.The . oil paint, bronze, marble, these things were all hat and they were also too historically loaded, justifiably so too.



[00:14:15] Alex Seton: And they have a huge legacy. I mean, just marble, the medium I know and love has this terrible reckoning with global imperialism, empire, colonialism, and it's been a symbol of that, or even just wealth and power. I can think of all the monuments of Europe and the many statues and representations of all kinds of terrible despots across the world.



[00:14:37] Alex Seton: And it was at a time I decided, Oh, well, then maybe I can reapply it to the banal, you know, take back this natural medium. It has an interesting context. You know, I have a familiarity, it's a cheap, accessible art material for me. I could go and take my little old Triumph car down to Wombeyan Caves, load up the suspension on the back axle, drive it back to the city and work on it.



[00:14:59] Alex Seton: And it was, it had this sort of ease of facility, which comes only through familiarity, which is the only reason I didn't rule it out. Even then I didn't know it was going to become a lifetime's worth exploration and endeavor as a medium for me that just comes naturally. And I've Since evolved in all my thinking around the medium, but those early days, you know, they really, I start to play and I think, oh, there's, there's a lot of interesting things here.



[00:15:22] Alex Seton: Not only confronting that history of the medium, but also a kind of reassessment of it. Also the idea of tangibility at all, things like restoring statuary, understanding how febrile and and fragile it actually is makes you think completely different conceptually about the poetry of the ages talking about stone, you know, stone is so mutable so changeable and it quickly decays. And that's never been more so true than in the last 20 years of urban pollution. Like I went to the American Academy in Rome in 2022 and worked alongside a whole lot of restorers, Some of the best in the field from American institutions. And they're talking about totally rewriting the book on restoration of stone statuary, just because of the last twenty years worth of pollution and really urban environments completely different.



[00:16:08] Alex Seton: Yeah, I mean even just Rome itself, the majority of most famous statuary have been replaced with copies outdoors and the originals have been brought indoors just to make sure they don't vanish I mean everything that's in your mobile phone is gonna last so much longer than a lot of the marble statuary even produced today.



[00:16:25] Anastasia: Wow.



[00:16:26] Anastasia: Just, because of the environmental impact?



[00:16:29] Alex Seton: Because of the environmental conditions and the changes in the acidic levels yeah, Anyway. It becomes an obsession.



[00:16:36] Anastasia: How did you learn the skills to make the kind of work you do today? Because your sculptures are very, I don't know if realistic is the right word, but they're very detailed.



[00:16:48] Alex Seton: There's a lot of technical precision in some of the work. Yeah, I think, I was at first interested in very much a trompe l'oeil, kind of technical level of sophistication, kind of trick of the eye, make this hard material look soft. So I Wanted a somatic paradox, I wanted people to check their senses.



[00:17:04] Alex Seton: So if you're getting back to that performative idea, how do you get people to reset their expectations of what am I looking at and why am I looking at it? I felt that was the best way to pursue it. So at first I'm skilling myself up. And I participate in sculpture symposiums, which at the time were really popular.



[00:17:21] Alex Seton: Early 2000s, there was a lot of them. In the 90s, there was even more of them. There was just a plethora of all these applications you could do every year. In some country, typically funded by a small Municipal council who just need 10 to 15 large sculptures for a new university sector or a new park or whatever was their intention.



[00:17:41] Alex Seton: The idea was to bring everyone together, they pay for 15 designs and you'd be paid to come over. So they pay for your airfare, they pay for your hotel, they feed you the whole time and you work in a park like a little zoo animal and people would come and visit you and watch the progress every day and at the end there would always be an award for sort of best in show plus a few other peripheral prizes. And they always went to the locals like it was a way of saying our town is better than... This is a lovely cute like form of pride. And I mean, the stipend back then was like 5, 000 US, which was great. It was really, really good. You just had to do a few of those a year and you're traveling the whole And you're working alongside often very senior sculptors who really technically knew what they were doing. It was great. Yeah. I mean, the artworks were. Awful. Almost always awful. Some of them were brilliant, but almost always awful.



[00:18:28] Anastasia: Were they like pre-designed or? Did you have any creative...?



[00:18:30] Alex Seton: You pre design, no, no, you win the participation via a drawing and a maquette, a photograph of a model or something. And, you know, just the quality was hugely varied. So I met extraordinary sculptors from like a lot of the Eastern bloc countries, who were very technically proficient. And they were doing these big abstract things that were just, to my eye, essentially meaningless.



[00:18:54] Alex Seton: But what was more important to them, as borne out by their art catalogs, was a picture of them flexing their biceps with a hammer and chisel on the front of their art catalogs. Which is more about their personal assertion of self. And it was interesting, it was compelling. And it's not like these guys didn't have, they tended to be men didn't have technique and you learn from them.



[00:19:14] Alex Seton: And then it was always like French women with brilliant concepts in every single one. But it was a real diaspora of, of artists and different archetypes from the 90s. And it was really fantastic and fun. And I was just a young artist eating it all up. So I learned from everybody. I went and sat by people, watched how they worked and you'd watch, you know, the old Italian guy who was maybe a little too Catholic, and he would carefully forge his steel tool in front of you. And then hand make, when everyone else is using electrical power tools, he's like pounding away and he's like, Oh, my bones, ahh my joints. For him, it was a form of penance or something, you know, it was like, and you realize that, There's a huge amount of traditional craftsmanship associated with material.



[00:19:57] Alex Seton: A huge amount of traditional romance as well. Where a lot of people were saying: you can't do that, you can't combine it with other materials. You must respect it as this sort of romantic thing. And sometimes from a modernist perspective or sometimes from a really traditional perspective. Not just truth from materials, but rather you just can't do that, it's not respectful, you know? And you're like, Ugh, okay.



[00:20:17] Alex Seton: So I didn't really meet a lot of contemporaneous sculptors until I started doing them in China. And then you just completely different attitude the material. It's like quick and the dead, get it done. Focus on the, on the result. And I sparked up at that and using modern power tools and circular tools and diamond heads and things like that. And I was like, Ooh, now we're kicking. Now we're not just doing this because of the unutterable exhortations of our soul.



[00:20:42] Alex Seton: It was so varied. I loved it. It was such a good learning curve and I was being paid to do it! that was my bigger learning.



[00:20:50] Alex Seton: Though did learn quite a bit at College of Fine Arts too, from the life drawing, life modeling classes. But even more so in practical action. Watching like a German artist carefully plot a very complex geometric sculpture and execute that flawlessly within four weeks, you know, and it's over 13 tons of stone.



[00:21:10] Alex Seton: Come on, you can't help but learn. You just go, whoa! Determination, precision, pre planning, that sort of thing. And understanding that the material can be all of those things. It can be the full beauty and poetry and romance of material from the earth. And it can be penance and it can be this cathartic thing for the artist in some form or other. Or it can be get a result and get something spectacular going, something that's dynamic and alive and relevant to us now.



[00:21:40] Alex Seton: Yeah. It lit me up. These were really pleasant times.



[00:21:42] Anastasia: Mm. Yeah. Great. So how did you get the ball rolling on becoming a professional artist? What were some of your first big opportunities and how did they come about?



[00:21:53] Alex Seton: I was hunting down opportunities. I didn't find many artists I could call mentors or that I admired. I, I didn't, for whatever reason in the late there wasn't a lot of nice people in the sculpture community in particular.



[00:22:07] Alex Seton: Not sharing, actually very, like, closed off people. And I just was like, oh, I'm not going to be like them, I don't want to be like them.



[00:22:14] Alex Seton: I started by, first of all, attending as many art openings as I could go to. I talked to lots of sculptors about what they were doing, and we were entering things like Sculpture by the Sea, which is in its burgeoning days. I think the start of the first one was in 1999. I don't think I got in it until 2002 for the first time. And then kept applying and, and won a few awards there, which got me attention, which then got me a commercial gallery to offer me a commercial show. The Maunsell Wickes Gallery. So in 2003, I win the Art Gallery of New South Wales Director's Choice Award, Young Unrepresented Artist. And I go and brag about that the next day an opening of my friend to the gallerists. And when they said, Oh, so what do you do? And I thought, I told them. And they were like, well, do you want to have a show here? And I was like, yeah. Absolutely.



[00:22:58] Alex Seton: Hahaha! Cool.



[00:23:00] Alex Seton: Yeah. And the person that introduced me to the gallerist was Ben Quilty and the artist who was showing that night was Claire Milliedge, who I'm still friends with both of them.



[00:23:08] Alex Seton: And that gallery at that time was offering young artists straight out of art school a fair square deal. They were doing 60, 40 split. You know, at the time it was very common for a gallery to say, no, no, we'll take a hundred percent of your first two shows before you become an entity.



[00:23:23] Anastasia: What!? Seriously?



[00:23:24] Alex Seton: Yeah, no, no, it was crazy. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah, I think they did it like a polite blow off right get rid of you Like but but it was very common.



[00:23:31] Alex Seton: And so this gallery who just looks us all in the eye went: yeah, yeah young artist, Let's do it! go nuts, like just go nuts in our gallery. The trust level is huge and it creates a



[00:23:39] Alex Seton: lot of excitement.



[00:23:40] Anastasia: Things have changed a bit I think.



[00:23:42] Alex Seton: Oh, sure. It's evolved over time and, and as all galleries should. And they've clearly moved out of that phase but at the time, oh my gosh, it was wonderful.



[00:23:50] Anastasia: Mhm.



[00:23:51] Anastasia: I think all galleries evolve with the energy and enthusiasm of their owners and the people working behind that desk. And there was a moment in the early 2000s, where they really were very good at talent spotting younger artists who were energetic and enthusiastic to create.



[00:24:07] Alex Seton: And there was a kind of Eastern suburbs collective base that got to know you and got excited about you. There was a lot of writing by former journalist Michael Reid about Australian artists and collecting. It was a certain era as well. Like there was this excitement about collecting lists of young artists doing interesting things.



[00:24:24] Alex Seton: And they used to do a thing at the S. H. Ervin Gallery every year, the best new upcoming artists, they'd do a survey show of the best of the year in commercial galleries. It was great! They don't do that stuff anymore.



[00:24:34] Anastasia: I know!



[00:24:35] Alex Seton: There's no equivalent. And there were so many awards around at that time. You could just keep entering and entering and entering and trying to win your way into that. Because there was a lot of excitement about a different generation of artists. Collectors were excited to collect cheaper work, because I think the artists they were used to following, they skipped a generation, over what would have been mid career or senior at that time and were still collecting really expensive or really cheap. There was a whole generation there who I say quite meanly before they were closed. In fairness, they'd been cut out of so much of what would be Australian sort of commercial collecting opportunity. Just because of, i don't know, the vicissitudes of the market and the way things happened in terms of the Australian art world and where the emphasis was put. Yeah.



[00:25:16] Alex Seton: So there's a generation of senior artists now who've been really hard earned, like through some of the most difficult collecting times and lack of interest in senior Australian artists, and they are only seeing that reward now, in fairness.



[00:25:28] Alex Seton: But I was of that generation that got very lucky. But we worked really hard and, Like, all my friends were like, we were entering every prize. It was a lot of energy for prizes and awards at that time. That was the only way you could really crack a bigger cultural discussion or even make an impact. I don't think awards function in that same way anymore.



[00:25:44]



[00:25:44] Anastasia: No.



[00:25:45] Alex Seton: We really had a view on that.



[00:25:46] Anastasia: I've had some experience with being in several finalists, ones, and honestly, my experience is, you're lucky if you get a couple of good photos of the work installed.



[00:25:59] Alex Seton: Oh yeah, you'd be lucky to get... particularly for sculptors, you're really lucky to get even a decent picture. a Because usually the lighting is so crap!



[00:26:07] Anastasia: My work has toured for the last two years around Australia, and there's one show where I don't even know where it's been. they never even really told me where it's gonna be when.



[00:26:21] Alex Seton: Oh I know this feeling.



[00:26:22] Alex Seton: might



[00:26:23] Anastasia: Oh, there's an opening and they CC me on the invite or something, you know?



[00:26:28] Alex Seton: Wild.



[00:26:28] Anastasia: And there's nothing on social media, like. For me, the awards that I've been in have mainly been loss of money, because I've had to pay to get the work there and back, and that's it. it's quite, it's been a bit shocking to be honest.



[00:26:46] Anastasia: It



[00:26:46] Alex Seton: has changed a lot. I think there's a lot to get into there, in terms of just your experience with that. we never had to navigate those things, in particular social media was not obviously wasn't around. But the idea of standing your ground as a maker, it looks differently now. I think there was a lot of, a gallery would take care of it. And there was kind of a presumed Now it's not presumed at all, they'll leave it off. So when approached by a curator now, I will have that discussion about are you going to promote this? How many posts? Like what sort of scale? Because otherwise they won't. Their calendars are already pre-programmed and if you're negotiating within a time slot or dropping into someone else's time slot. Now you have to actually talk about all of that stuff. It's very different now.



[00:27:24] Alex Seton: It's a very different um, kettle of fish.



[00:27:28] Alex Seton: And I, I'm 47 now, and my first solo show happens when I'm 26, so almost exactly twenty years ago. I'm only properly feeling mid career now and feeling those changes, absolutely. Because it's just a completely different discussion when you sit down and to discuss what the show looks like and why they're taking it, What are the funds around it? There's more funds around shows now, which is good. It used to be that the artist almost never got paid, even a fee that would cover all of the meetings that go into the pre planning everything. Now, at least stipends at least cover that. Even if they can't afford to properly pay you a commission fee when you produce new work for a show. But interestingly, I think back then, while I say it was a freeride, there was also a panic of like, there's very limited opportunities, so you have to apply for everything!



[00:28:12] Alex Seton: So I think that, that art school scare still really did take, because there's a generation of artists who like, only now do I realize, oh no, I'm mid-career artist, it's not going away now. This career isn't just walking away. Whereas I used to say yes to everything. Like manic way. It's just not healthy, it's just not healthy. You have to say no. You have to put strict lines around what leaves the studio, is it the right work for you? Is it the right opportunity as well as an opportunity you might be excited about because it has names attached or an institution attached that you're excited about. But if the nature of the opportunity they're presenting to youdoesn't feel quite right, for whatever reason, you have to say no, you have to say no! Because otherwise you're going to be stuck with an opportunity that was never going to satisfy you creatively or professionally. And you're like, oh dear, I regret doin this and I thought it was going to be this amazing thing.



[00:29:00] Anastasia: Have you said yes to opportunities that weren't right for you?



[00:29:04] Alex Seton: Of course! Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, when worse, there is that classic nobody prepares you for success in the Australian art world. And we've had a, definitely my generation has had a wealth of success. Whether it be commercially because there was superannuation allowed to invest in contemporary art for quite a while. But it did unfortunately get killed by the politicians. But it meant that there was a lot of wealth for our early shows around for people to invest in their work,and they're very proud of having invested in a generation, so they stay with them. They stay with them their entire life so. I have collectors who have collected one from almost every one of my shows. When we're talking over 30 shows, that's a lot.



[00:29:44] Anastasia: Yeah. Yeah, that's huge.



[00:29:47] Alex Seton: Yeah, It's huge. And I don't think that that happens so much anymore, for various different reasons. It's just a little bit more disparate.



[00:29:53] Alex Seton: There was also the fear of not being prepared for success or having them say you should take every opportunity, meaning you're running into everything, but you're also expecting, I think, if you emotionally invest in every success, like it was going to be world changing, you're just setting yourself up with the disappointment as the bar gets higher. You keep doing well, but then I was that dumb kid. I used to get post show blues and get really down and then throw myself for the next project, expecting it to reward me better, emotionally reward me better as well as financially reward.



[00:30:20] Alex Seton: And you're like, Oh.



[00:30:22] Anastasia: Yeah. I



[00:30:23] Alex Seton: And it took going to see someone, as recommended by a really decent fellow artist who said, Oh, I recognize what's happening with you. I had the same issue. Go and talk to someone about this. And there's some creative therapists, practitioners whose field of expertise is the creative life and with all of its ups and downs in the arc of emotionally investing. Making sure you disassociate what your expectations are for you personally as a reward, so you don't take it too personally.



[00:30:51] Anastasia: Mm-Hmm.



[00:30:52] Alex Seton: If it just doesn't do well, or if it just doesn't get received in the manner in which you thought it would.



[00:30:56] Anastasia: So you actually went and saw somebody



[00:30:59] Anastasia: and talked to?



[00:30:59] Alex Seton: I did. And then, honestly, less than ten sessions just about post show blues,



[00:31:04] Alex Seton: I've never suffered it since.



[00:31:06] Anastasia: I need to go and see that person! person



[00:31:08] Alex Seton: Because I think there's an intellectual thing that you have to do to yourself where you re see it, you reframe what your practice is to you. and of course the fear going into it quite obviously is you don't want to lose the magic.



[00:31:21] Alex Seton: You don't want to unpick those drivers, but actually no, you're just protecting yourself. You're giving yourself more. You're able to put shows at a distance for a result, you know, and also just know what's going on within you during the times where you shouldn't be decisions.



[00:31:35] Alex Seton: Becausejust when n you're riding a high or a low, these aren't 't the best times to be thinking clearly about what's going to happen next because they're not always that high and they're not always that low.



[00:31:44] Anastasia: That's some great advice there. always I've been going to therapy recently . And I realized that my therapist does not understand that specific niche of being an artist. There's a disconnect there, like, there's stuff I'm communicating that's not really sparking, you know?



[00:32:05] Anastasia: So I'm like, yeah, I need that.



[00:32:06] Alex Seton: Oh, I might have to recommend you that particular name. Uh, yeah, that's right. Because I think there was a very specific thing that I musicians, well, anyone in the creative industries recognize, particularly time based projects. So they're very specific allotment of time. So it has a very mania and curve to it.



[00:32:24] Anastasia: Yeah. The post show blues,yeah.



[00:32:24] Alex Seton: Yeah.



[00:32:26] Anastasia: For me it's the post opening blues actually. Yeah.



[00:32:29] Alex Seton: So when I told this therapist that my best mate was an emergency nurse, he was like, Oh yeah, that checks out. Of course it would be. You both have this manic lifestyle that's so dependent on results and you live and die with those results. And it's like, yeah, it's a really simple, easy unpick. But seeing a professional about it, it's great. I would highly recommend it



[00:32:48] Anastasia: Yeah, I I was just telling my friend the other day, we need therapists for artists. Well, apparently it's a thing.



[00:32:55] Alex Seton: Well there are.. There are.



[00:32:56] Anastasia: you go.



[00:32:56] Alex Seton: tell you there are.



[00:32:58] Anastasia: I'm glad to hear it. Let's talk a bit about the practical aspects of your work.



[00:33:04] Alex Seton: Yeah.



[00:33:04] Anastasia: Stone carving looks like a very physically demanding medium.



[00:33:09] Alex Seton: Mm hmm.



[00:33:10] Anastasia: Tell me a bit about Some of the challenges of working with marble and how you manage that.



[00:33:18] Alex Seton: I was very aware that sculpture was the thing that I was being drawn to. I didn't think I was being drawn towards specifically the medium of marble. That's come later over time where I'm like, I keep having these ideas in this particular medium and I enjoy it. I think there's a little practical element there. I was attracted to the medium because all the other sculpture mediums I was playing with: doing a lot of ceramics, doing a lot of polyurethane, polyester carving, closed foams of different kinds on the sets- they're really toxic. Like, really toxic. Even the glazes for ceramics are very, toxic. And it made me very, very sick. And I worked on things like, I had a sponsorship from Caesarstone for a year, where they gave me free materials of Caesarstone. We all know about synthetic stone now. But I was laminating this stuff together, like grinding it.



[00:34:10] Alex Seton: And I'm like, why am I feeling so sick? And they're like, here, look at the technical data sheets. It's totally safe. There's no reason to think that you would be sick. But it was free. I wasn't being paid, but I did get this free material, whatever I want. And they had wonderful cartoonish color palette back then. So I could laminate all this stone together, fake stone, and carve it. It was brutal. I got so sick by the end of the year. I said, I don't want to do this anymore. And gave it back to them and said, enough, thank you. And thankfully I haven't suffered any seemingly long term damage from it. Cause I check my lungs regularly now, but long story short is this medium you know, when it has memorial written into it and I'm finding that I can create this sort of technique and trompe l'oeil technique, it was being effective for me.



[00:34:48] Alex Seton: Maybe my undiagnosed ADHD brain loved the challenge and was placated by these complex challenges of three dimensional sculpture. Really brightened my mind up, focused it, gave it clarity. So the more I was doing sculpture, the better night's sleep I would get. the clearer I would be, I knew it was healthy for me, it just felt healthy for me. So I think that positive feedback begets more intrigue and thinking within that medium and the bounds of that medium. Obviously it's getting me to travel early, taking me abroad. It was so exciting. I knew there was something to be said for the medium from the colonial removal of Australia too. It has a different voice, it looks differently. There's Australian marble here that's extraordinary and I was learning about it and I was looking at this history and I'm thinking, oh, this is really compelling and interesting and has this different thing going on.



[00:35:41] Alex Seton: There's all these different aspects to it that I'm like, Oh, it is of the world around me. And is it's a really lovely antidote to the digital world that I'm increasingly beginning to live. And I'm thinking, Oh no, no, I really love working with my hands at the end of the day. And so it evolves into a technical practice that I'm learning from restoring antiques, beautifully carved antiques that are broken in like 50, 60 pieces.



[00:36:04] Alex Seton: And when you assemble them with such intimate detail, you learn how people treat different carving problems like hands and feet and fabric and cloth. And so I think I started small and within my means to get back to your technical question. And then it grew from there and it got larger and larger as a scope of it.



[00:36:21] Alex Seton: And I'm thinking, well, I don't want to be this fussy. How am I treating this medium? This medium is a very interesting one. It has a certain amount of resonance. I could see that it was being discarded by everybody as in nobody cared for it. Even all of the stone merchants were just giving me a box of marble for a case of beer. Yeah, and that's only changed in, like, the last decade, since the rise of computer aided cutting and robot carving, has meant that designers suddenly want those big dimension stones to carve whole bathroom sinks and things like that.



[00:36:51] Alex Seton: Suddenly the marble merchants are hanging on to that marble. They would just give it away, couldn't get rid of it before, nobody was interested, Nobody cared.



[00:36:57] Anastasia: I would have thought it would be so expensive.



[00:37:00] Alex Seton: Oh, it is now. It's really expensive now. Marble's gone up 500 percent since in, just the last seven years. It's really expensive now. It's something that increasingly, if I hadn't had stores from when I was younger I wouldn't be able to do, I wouldn't be able to do, and I wouldn't recommend anyone do it.



[00:37:17] Alex Seton: I'm getting means an opportunity now where I'm senior enough that I can have access to materials or budgets and people trust me with it. But having to prove yourself in that medium would be very difficult for a younger artist. I think you still can, it's not impossible, and I'll certainly point lots of young artists to where they can get cheaper stone and all that sort of thing.



[00:37:36] Alex Seton: And there's an increased interest in that medium now, too. I think it is an antidote to the digital world. You want something tangible I think artists are very attracted to things like clay and stone because they're natural, they're direct. They have their own properties that are so diametrically opposed to the ethereal digital space, whereas these are fixed point materials. They're so compelling to people to work with their hands again and feel nature at their fingertips. Yeah, it's really interesting to see the real growth and interest in that as a medium.



[00:38:09] Alex Seton: But Yeah, I think technically I just, I worked within my means. So I've got sketchbooks filled with regret as in filled with ideas that were way too expensive to ever make.



[00:38:19] Alex Seton: In the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, there was a contingent from the Beijing Sculpture Society. And they were in charge, they had a military guy at the head of it called Fan Weimin. And he came out to see Australian sculptors and asked for their biggest idea.



[00:38:34] Alex Seton: And somehow I got, I think I was friends with the translator, I got into his tour, as in he came for a studio visit. And the translator is like, just pull out your biggest ideas. And so I'm like, great, I've got a really compelling idea that I really want to do. So I pulled out my biggest sketchbook, a really oversized, A1 thing.



[00:38:50] Alex Seton: And I had this huge sketch of this valley, which had these poles of stone. And it just created this flat level of a ghost of a lake. 'Cause of course China was doing that a lot, filling in a lot of regions and territories. But it was also the idea of the ghost of everything. And you walk amongst the forest of stone down below .



[00:39:06] Alex Seton: And then he was conferring and he looked very serious. The general's there, you know he nods and chats to the translator and then walks out and I go, oh, what happened? And she goes: too ambitious. And then it was like, Oh, okay. Well, you said most ambitious!



[00:39:20] Alex Seton: I had lots of stuff like that. Like this happened all the time, but that's where I quickly learned to restrict myself to be within my means, which is good and bad. I think it should always be a mix because there's a wealth now, I think, of better grants. I think there's more money in those grants. Like, Create New South Wales have just increased their annuals to a hundred thousand rather than fifty thousand, the capping of individual new work grants. That wasn't around back then. There just wasn't, that much money.



[00:39:49] Alex Seton: And that's really great. There is opportunity, but of course they're limited. So I would encourage everyone to just mix it up. And that's what I did. Because you make some things work and sometimes you win a really great grant to develop a very specific project and sometimes you don't. And more often than not it won't be. But doing a real mix... you know, because I've got friends who are almost entirely institutional based work, it's not commercial. Good on them, great, if you can make that work. But it looks and feels a very specific way. And I, I want a diverse and big practice, something that's interesting to me. And I have ideas that vary from arcane to quite populist. And I'm okay with that. That's my practice. That's me. So my practice lends itself towards that.



[00:40:29] Alex Seton: But I think key to all of that, like in the final answer, big long winded answer to your question, the key to sculpture is space, having a space to make it in. And I always knew that. So every time when I was working very hard, all my funds in my 20s went into setting aside money to get a studio or have a bigger and better studio.



[00:40:50] Alex Seton: So working out of mom and dad's garage for a while, that was one form of support that I could do for a while in my 20s. And then I moved into a big, Marrickville studio space with other artists that was just big vault of a thing. And so I could square off a little area and make a lot of dust and nobody cared.



[00:41:05] Alex Seton: It might float across to some canvases, but They didn't notice too much.



[00:41:09]



[00:41:09] Alex Seton: And all of those early days you just make do, but I'm saying that having the space to make it is very, very important. Having a space to immerse yourself in every day. And I just made sure I went to work every day, without hesitation. I just went to the space and started working.



[00:41:24] Alex Seton: You know, almost always seven days a week for me in some form or other, at least for a few hours every day, just do it every day. And even that was squeezing it in between other jobs, but that's why I mostly tried to get things like sculpture restoration, I could bring it to my own studio, do it there and spend half the day on that. And then the other half of the day on my own work.



[00:41:43] Alex Seton: Yeah. The idea was to stay in that studio and build a, build a world. And that way, of course, when, whether it be collectors or curators or just general industry professionals, when they walked into your studio, they could see the intention. But for me, it also felt that way. It's like, Oh no, I'm doing this, how will I fill the space? Of all the things I want to make, what do I want to make for me? And you start asking yourself that question every day when you walk into a studio like that. And so before I knew it I was getting people to help me on working, because of course, as you say, it's labor intense. And being able to throw a little bit of money at you know, one day a week assistants help me do certain tasks to take the edge off. Because I'd be so exhausted, I was just pale in my twenties. Smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, not sleeping, working all the time. I was just grey the whole time. And just, like, a little powder keg, like, just Pigpen in Charlie Brown. I was just Pigpen. I was just that guy. Still am, really. But It wasn't that healthy. It wasn't, it wasn't that healthy. But I was manic. I was obsessed.



[00:42:45] Anastasia: So you would outsource some parts of your work?



[00:42:48] Alex Seton: Well, outsource is a bit of a, no. I would allocate tasks.



[00:42:52] Alex Seton: When I realised there's just too much to get through and I'd bitten off more than I can chew and I'd over promised on a show or whatever.



[00:42:58] Anastasia: Do you still I just do that now?



[00:43:00] Alex Seton: I've had the same full time assistant for close to 15 years.



[00:43:03] Alex Seton: Yeah, this guy Mitchell Ferry, he's an artist, he's represented by Nanda Hobbs. He's probably my best friend, he's a beautiful guy, artist in his own right. He has shows from time to time, but I cast a big shadow and I know he's happy to work with me every day and put up with me every day. And he's a trained stonemason.



[00:43:22] Alex Seton: So he takes some of the labor out of things and just do the large physical cutting up. Or we take turns in that. Sometimes I've got him polishing, just doing this sort of mundane task. There's so many mundane tasks in sculpture, as in there's a lot of surface to be finished. There's a lot of surface to be paid attention to and cared and treated for in a very particular way. There's too many tasks to number here. But I could always deploy him and I trust him and I trust him to get there to a point. And then I'll take over.



[00:43:50] Alex Seton: So everything of mine is hand finished by me. But I've loved employing recently carving robots. So we scan a smaller maquette of mine, and then we can take it to someone who has a robot, they can mill to within, you know, a certain tolerance, and then I can put my hand finishing on it again. That's even faster. It's amazing and extraordinarily accurate to my original intention. I love the technology. I think there's a lot to be said for it. I think there's a lot of saving time and, and labor that just needn't be time sucking anymore. And it's also demanding on my body. I've been carving 27 years. And I think starting to feel it now.



[00:44:27] Anastasia: Yeah? It's taking a toll on you physically or?



[00:44:29] Alex Seton: Oh, I'm probably stronger than I've ever been, but I'm just, I realize I'm slowing down. Like feel the aches a little bit. so I imagine if that continues, it's going to... I'll really feel it in say 10 years and then feel it a lot more in the 10 years after that. I mean it's very healthy making as well. I've been active and moving my entire life. It's not a sedentary lifestyle being a sculptor. You move around the sculpture all the time. So it gives and takes.



[00:44:56] Anastasia: What about the stone dust? That's not toxic? You're fine just spending all day in it?



[00:45:03] Alex Seton: You have to be very careful. Some marble is, you know, 99. 999 percent calcium carbonate, quite benign on the human body. You sort of digest a bit of calcium if you breathe it in and the rest you would urinate out, it's fine. But you don't want to be breathing dust, just generally. You just don't want to be breathing dust. It's very bad for temporary lung health, let alone prolonged exposure.



[00:45:25] Alex Seton: No, but some marble does have a percentage of silica in it. Some stones have a lot, like, really a lot. Like, I don't even touch sandstone, which is 99 percent silica. You just wouldn't do that for scarification of the lungs and things like that over long term exposure. So I'm like a deep sea diver, I have a hospital grade filtered air system that brings fresh air via a pipe. Directly to my mouth via a regulated mask. And it means I'm breathing fresh air like a deep sea diver. And then, that way, I'm just cutting out breathing through filters and changing filters and all that sort of stuff. And it's high quality, hospital grade.



[00:46:02] Alex Seton: We're looking after ourselves, we're looking after our lungs. Both Mitch and I go for regular lung checks. It's all covered, you know. I'm in this for life, I don't want to go out, expire early. I don't want to be Joel Elenberg. Nobody wants to be Joel Elenberg. God, that man did beautiful things. He's the former husband of Anna Schwartz, the famous gallerist. He was a very well known Australian marble sculptor. He went and trained in Italy. He was good friends with Brett Whitely And he was quite the tormented soul when you look at his paintings and drawings. And then at some point he starts doing these very elegant multicolored stones and he's laminating green marble, white marble, black marble from all around Australia. He's using a lot of Queensland stones and stuff. But he gets to, I don't quite know when he was diagnosed, but a few years before he died at about the age of 33, he gets a brain tumor. But the high exposure to toxicity of the glues that he was using then, plus a lot of the silica and sulfur in black marble in particular, and the green marble as well, and the high heavy metal content in the green marble. That couldn't have helped. Couldn't have helped. So I hear about all that story and I'm like, ugh. So obviously I'll, you can hear in my voice later, I've clearly got a technical side, because I also want to manage all that stuff. I don't want to fucking



[00:47:19] Alex Seton: die early. No way. I'm having too much fun.



[00:47:22] Anastasia: We touched on this before about the stone sculptures being taken indoors. Tell me about your experience creating public art and permanent works.



[00:47:35] Alex Seton: Yeah,



[00:47:35] Anastasia: What goes into that?



[00:47:37] Alex Seton: Yeah so I learnt a lot from the early days with those sculpture symposiums and then things like Sculpture by the Sea.



[00:47:44] Alex Seton: When you take work outdoors, it's a very specific thing. One, you can lose it to nature straight away. Like nature is just more spectacular and larger. So anything you do in the studio you think is huge, take it outdoors and it looks miniscule, just vanishes in the landscape. So scale is this huge challenge to sculpture.



[00:48:02] Alex Seton: And I'm making a lot of work that is life size, stuff that you recognize, like intimate and made for intimate spaces. So I avoid trying going outdoors early. But I go to Sculpture By The Sea and I can make things like an oversized marble couch



[00:48:16] Alex Seton: because it's well within my wheelhouse of trompe l'oeil and command. I can do a big marble couch and put "this is no time to sit around, get up and enjoy the day" right on this perfect photographic, like backdrop of the landscape on St. Mark's Park and stuff like that. And you realize that people will interact as long as there's a sort of sensuality to it. People want to touch it, want to check it. People are launching themselves at these seemingly soft objects. It's fun. I can hurt people. No, no. It was, it was more about getting engagement. This idea that I actually wanted people to be engaging with the work and asking why, why did he write that? That's odd. aOr asking questions, just asking questions.



[00:48:52] Alex Seton: And so how do you do that in a public art opportunity is a different challenge again. So I tried to do some very early on and give up very, very quickly.



[00:49:03] Alex Seton: I'm looking at these contracts that were awful, just awful. They're just designed for the artist to lose. And what I mean by that is they used to avoid giving separate concept fees. So you'd be asked to just do it as a prospective idea. So people would fish for ideas by putting an open competition, don't choose the artist who proposed that idea, and then commission another artist to do that idea, or fabricate it to do that idea. And there was no protections for the artist, there was no protections for recovering any of that. So IP was being ripped off of left, right and center by the nature of these documents. And there was almost the same budget, it was always 200, 000, it's like a generic thing. And for that there was footings, insurance, and engineering – all had to be included. And that stuff wasn't changing, you'd see that same proposal come up time and time again. So I just was like, it's not even worth the money you've written of. Once you've broken that actually down, there's very little money for you left. And all the artists I knew who were succeeding were cutting into their material budgets: getting cheap materials, cutting corners, in order to scrape their fee from out somewhere. Cause the, everything was rolled into one. Your concept fee was not separate. Your artist fee was not separate. It was all rolled into



[00:50:13] Anastasia: rolled



[00:50:13] Alex Seton: budget. Yeah. And then somehow you had to, you could make your mind up about how much money you wanted to take.



[00:50:20] Alex Seton: And it was like, Almost every artist I know was sacrificing their entire income for the sake of this project, just for the opportunity. And that's bad. Because they would hurt themselves. And I've seen artists hurt themselves on that and I've done it myself. But so like there was a, a very early work of mine, I realized worked well outdoors, this big marble parcel, went up to Newcastle. Nobody's bought it at the time. Sculptured by The Sea loaned it to Newcastle University, it just sat outside and people touched it, sat on it and partyed on it outside the Law campus. And then it went to Canberra, where it sits in Canberra now in Civic, outdoors. So I knew like, it wasn't actually necessarily about physical scale. It's sort of an intimacy of idea, a playfulness, engagement, curiosity and that's slightly different to public art opportunity though. Because that's just set and forget, that's just plonk a thing down and hope people accept it.



[00:51:13] Alex Seton: Which is probably the worst way to do proper public art. So we're talking about different thing from sculpture outdoors to Public Art. Public art has loaded expectations for the space. And I think there's classic stories from the late nineties, early 2000s of public art gone wrong. I think the biggest ones I can think of that jumped to mind, that really made an impact about, okay, this is a space we have to be really careful in.



[00:51:38] Alex Seton: There's things like at King's Cross, at the overpass, a building was going up, which is there now. And originally, they did this big international competition and a Japanese artist won it with an enormous sculpture of a phallus. It was meant to be a big penis, and it was made of porcelain tiles. Porcelain tiles which had been distributed to all of the brothels and sex workers of King's Cross, for them to write and record their stories in any way, shape, or form they like. And that would form the basis of the stories laminated onto this phallus. And it was a Japanese artist, she'd come from one of those towns that traditionally celebrates the male phallus as a symbol.



[00:52:17] Alex Seton: And it was loaded. It was interesting. And they'd chosen it. Nobody could believe it. I think maybe it was late nineties. And we were like, amazing. This is going to be great. And surprisingly, it was the Australian arts community that shut that shit



[00:52:30] Alex Seton: down because they were like, it should go to an Australian artist.



[00:52:34] Anastasia: Okay. Right, so...



[00:52:35] Alex Seton: So disastrously, the next story is the one that won it, which is the Ken Unsworth. Ken Unsworth did a series of balancing balls and sticks. Which we now know as poo on Sticks by its colloquial name. Poor guy, like it's not his fault. He designed it, and then regulations about scalability and things like that, the council intervened, and they tipped it at a more gregarious angle and the fabricators mucked up the fake stones that are up there in fibreglass and they started leaching oxide. And so they painted them brown, so they ended up looking like poo on sticks that's hence how it got its name. So it was a disaster from beginning to end.



[00:53:13] Alex Seton: But because it's about interference in the process, it's about, giving too much voice to the community sometimes. The other one I'm thinking of is the East Sydney commission, down in the back streets here behind the Australian Museum. There's a sort of dais on the street corners, like a raised area. So a sculpture was commissioned and put there of a woman leaning in a doorway. Another sex worker tribute.



[00:53:35] Alex Seton: The community fucking



[00:53:36] Alex Seton: hated it, so much so that they ended up tearing it down. I don't know if they tore it down or if the council quietly removed it, after so much objection. which is problematic in and of itself.



[00:53:46] Alex Seton: Because as much as I diss on people like Ron Robertson Swann, the metal sculptor, you know, he fought for Australian artists rights. He was the only person that's really taken it all the way up. And to the high court and he fought for Australia's artists and architects, particularly sculptors, but architects as well, for their right to the site for which they've been commissioned. And that's a very important right. We do things for the opportunity cost, not just for the financial reward.



[00:54:15] Alex Seton: And therefore, we have a right to that site for at least a certain amount of time. You know, and that's very big. So this artist would have been well within their rights to complain about that being taken down, but sometimes you just You don't fight it for whatever reason. But I remember all these particular instances all happening when I'm a young sculptor and going, Ooh, this is interesting.



[00:54:34] Alex Seton: There's so much loaded expectation around a public site. There's specific stakeholders. And then there's a reason the commissioner, whoever it be, whether it be a local council or a local group who are sponsoring it, their intent has to be clear and precise as well. So they're all in the briefing documents is what I learned because an artist can show people something that they didn't know they wanted, which I think is actually the role of an artist.



[00:55:00] Alex Seton: Like, show people something that they didn't know they didn't want.



[00:55:02] Alex Seton: Like, so every time you start listening to the expectations of the community too much, or the commissioners too much, you're embracing their ideas for what it should be rather than bringing something interesting and new.



[00:55:13] Anastasia: That's yours. Yeah.



[00:55:14] Alex Seton: And so I was always very cautious around that space and I actually said no to commissions for the majority of my life. It's actually only in the last sort of five, six years have I been doing commissions.



[00:55:24] Alex Seton: I had a gentle walk into my major commissions, which is, I was doing a body of work on the Australian flag. Just the flag in general, as a piece of cloth as a loaded symbol, what it is we project onto it.



[00:55:35] Alex Seton: Particularly after some really strange interactions post Cronulla riots in 2006. That next Australia day There were a bunch of kids running around with Australian flags trying to make people kiss the flags or they'd punch them in the face. And you'd be like, are you fucking



[00:55:48] Alex Seton: serious? I got into so many conflicts, like, not conflicts, but like verbal stouches, like with people, never physical. You just go: alright,, I'm gonna make work about this. This is so Fucked



[00:55:57] Alex Seton: up and interesting at the same time. And one of the pieces I did was a work as a mea culpa. As in, I'm a voting Australian citizen in a liberal social democracy. We vote for the people who make the decisions and I have protested the war in Afghanistan. However, we voted for people, politicians who sent a voluntary force to war. That voluntary force isn't to blame and we should take responsibility for what happens when they get back.



[00:56:21] Alex Seton: And I made a folded flag,



[00:56:25] Alex Seton: in a blank, kind of anonymous fashion. After reading about a soldier standing by his mate's tomb in a tutu. And it was the pact they'd made, a way of asserting their individuality against the uniform and the flag. And being able to say, I'm not just a soldier, I'm an individual.



[00:56:42] Alex Seton: But interestingly, it's easy to forget we're talking about individuals making these choices and I wanted to bring that back.



[00:56:49] Alex Seton: And I made this work called As Of Today and it was 28 marble Folded Flags. And The Australian War Memorial saw it and they said: well, we'd like you to match the honor roll for Afghanistan and continue on with it. So actually it's an ongoing commission that is now numbered at 47 marble flags.



[00:57:09] Alex Seton: And, that brought me into contact with a whole community. I was approached by different families. So I'd had a bit of time to think about it, so when that commission came up with the Australian War Memorial, and I was one of the artists invited to submit an idea, I'd had a bit of a head start thinking about all of that.



[00:57:26] Alex Seton: And then, in the War Memorial's There's an amazing art staff there. They fight the good fight for artists, their commissioning documents are right, and let's face it, they have great budgets. They can afford to do everything right. And you know you're in safe hands with your practice and respect for your practice because the art department are from an art world background.



[00:57:45] Alex Seton: That's not always the case with every institution. So I did get lucky. So I would say that it's not everyone's experience of what public art is. Because I've certainly had public art experiences since, such as the Australian Living Museums, which is now Museums of History in New South Wales and their Hyde Park Barracks Commission, which, publicly just fell over. They just stopped doing it in the middle of a commission with me. And they technically lied about the reasons why, and didn't avail themselves of the contractual obligations. As in, they lived up to every contractual obligation, they had some technical outs that they didn't avail themselves of, which is surprising.



[00:58:21] Alex Seton: A journalist put it all together and it had nothing to do with me, it had everything to do with change of directorship and politics in the back rooms of those institutions. And I am very pleased to say that they've brought back that commission now.



[00:58:31] Anastasia: It's back,



[00:58:33] Alex Seton: back but I have not been invited



[00:58:35] Alex Seton: Oh, ok!



[00:58:36] Alex Seton: Might be the price of speaking up, I don't know. I would suggest it probably is, but I don't think it matters. I could see why they would want to start again with a fresh artist and fresh ideas and



[00:58:46] Anastasia: Because that was quite a big project, wasn't it?



[00:58:48] Alex Seton: Yeah, it was huge. It was a half a million dollar project. It would have been lovely to get it. And I was very hurt by it at the time. But it's just, the runaround, the runaround. I'm a professional, I can take the hits. You can clearly tell me no, you can avail yourselves of your art clauses. But they didn't do any of those things. They dodged and weaved like nothing else. It was really disappointing from an institution. And I think everyone at the time ought to be ashamed of themselves, what I will say now publicly. They're clearly not intending to invite me back ever, but, but it can go wrong.



[00:59:19] Alex Seton: And that's the point is that the public commission space is so fraught. You've got to have good advocacy within the institution. An artist can't be everything. You cannot be the engineer, the designer, you can't do all those things. And there are some amazing artists who attempt to be, like Jenny Turpin is incredible at almost all of those things. And to retain the artistic integrity of the project as well. But it's a full time job. I think it really is a full time job. And I've got this commercial show to show practice that I do with my commercial gallery as well.



[00:59:50] Alex Seton: If you don't have a good advocate for the commission and defending the artists, the artists rights the needs of the stakeholders, the needs of the institution, and All of the variables of a public space, which can change at any one time. It is such a melange of different things to navigate that there's no wonder that Arts Law are dealing with huge amounts of calls every week to do with public art gone wrong. That is actually one of the single biggest uses of their time.



[01:00:18] Anastasia: Wow, that's shocking information.



[01:00:21] Anastasia: Okay. Interesting. I'm lining up an episode about public art from the perspective of people who facilitate it, not people



[01:00:30] Alex Seton: who make it.



[01:00:31] Anastasia: So yeah, that's an interesting



[01:00:33] Alex Seton: Yeah. And I think what's wonderful to see is that, I think everybody's learned from that. So Sydney's really struggled from, I've got articles from back when I was a student, about how little successful public art there was in Sydney. And that's evolved a lot in the last decade. There's been the evolution of places like Culture Capital, UAP, Urban Art Projects. These are people who are trained from the artistic background. These are companies that have resources in other walks of life. So they've got engineers and designers and landscape architects in their staff and they can assist the artist. So these are professionalized teams that come to make this stuff possible.



[01:01:11] Alex Seton: Now, that doesn't mean the price of public art has gone up a lot, but there's a lot more protections for the artist and it's very unlikely these things go wrong now. Not, not in the same way because it used to be all on the artist to get that team together individually, piece by piece, unless you're a particularly social artist, it was impossible.



[01:01:28] Alex Seton: So I'm I'm very glad at the advent of these public art consultants who know what each project needs and defends the artist to do it. So we're seeing a lot of really great public art coming out now.



[01:01:40] Alex Seton: I think for sculptors and installation artists, dealing with space and opportunity for space in the modern and urban environment where everything comes with a price tag is the single hardest challenge.



[01:01:52] Alex Seton: So I think there are a lot of spaces throughout a city, and I think City of Sydney does it well when they want to do Art and About or when they want to activate spaces. But Getting a little Jeanne Claude and Christo about it, and actively approaching people. People are delighted when when approached for an idea for a space that they've never had.



[01:02:12] Alex Seton: You'd be surprised how receptive and open people are, and even willing to throw money at it. So don't be afraid to just go and knock on damn doors. People will love it when you care about a space.



[01:02:21] Anastasia: I want to ask you another question about logistics. This is something that a lot of the listeners and artists can relate to. Because your work is so heavy,



[01:02:35]



[01:02:35] Anastasia: tell me a story or two



[01:02:39] Alex Seton: Or twenty.



[01:02:41] Anastasia: About the challenges you've faced with the logistical aspect of showing your work, storing your work...



[01:02:48] Anastasia: installing it.



[01:02:49] Alex Seton: installing it has always been an issuee. Particularly in narrow houses of Sydney. Even wealthy Eastern Suburbs. It's just like inclines s and narrow driveways. Art trucks trying to get up there without tipping the artwork over and things like that. And then wheeling them up into spaces upstairs. And these are like half ton works. Yeah. It's specialized equipment and there are some movers and I'm definitely on the blacklist of most of the art movers.



[01:03:15]



[01:03:15] Alex Seton: no, no, not a blacklist, but they all go. Alex's



[01:03:19] Alex Seton: work. not you again. Yeah, oh no, not you again. Definitely. The whole point is to try and make it as easy as possible. So, I've worked with the same trucking company since I was 16, who have 13 ton high abs that can reach out and do up to 6 ton or 8 ton sculptures and reach them out a fair distance, Before you have to get into the big heavy cranes, block off streets, get permits and all that sort of stuff.



[01:03:42] Alex Seton: There is a kind of logistical threshold where things are easy and then they're suddenly not. So the first leap up is always like, can you carry it or not?



[01:03:52] Alex Seton: Everything before that, super easy. The next bar up is what can you put on a pallet jack? Most standard pallet jacks are between two and two and a half ton. That's your threshold. That's where you can move around the studio. That's easy to deal with. That's where you can get up on a bench with a engine hoist or like a block and tackle. What's the next level up? It's the four to six ton truck skates. Can you move them around the studio easily by just hiring some truck skates, which are just heavier rollers, you know, and that's fine. But getting that sculpture into a sculpture space usually requires a hundred ton crane because you lose weight and ballast ratio as soon as you start going out at distance. And so you have to get a hundred ton crane to move a six ton sculpture 28 meters or something. You get into that threshold. That starts to get very expensive.



[01:04:41] Alex Seton: So the big thing about either art in public spaces or just art outdoors is making sure that they're aware of that threshold. We're suddenly going to be talking about X amount of expense. Have you factored in installation as a separate cost? It's all very practically minded, but it actually gets easy when you've found good people. And that's what I've done. That's what the benefit of years of experience is. I've found good people. And I use them and would happily share the resources with people because we want them to survive. We want them to do really well.



[01:05:09] Anastasia: You must be also hyper aware of how much each of your pieces weighs?



[01:05:16] Alex Seton: Yeah, there's a little running betting game that we have with every sculpture. How much does it weigh? And Mitch writes on the whiteboard his guess, and I write my guess and whoever guesses the closest wins, and the other person buys the beers that afternoon. Or whatever. Or whatever. Sometimes, sometimes it's money, sometimes it's lunch. If it's a big sculpture and we're like, oh, I really don't know what that's going to weigh. So we have a set of digital scales that go up to like five ton.



[01:05:40] Anastasia: Wow.



[01:05:41] Alex Seton: And



[01:05:43] Alex Seton: it's to the gram, like, you can get it really close, so the bedding gets pretty fierce.



[01:05:48] Anastasia: I mean, for me, it's even hard to imagine having to have a crane in your studio because otherwise you cannot even lift that one single piece you've just finished, you know?



[01:05:58] Alex Seton: And it's like you know, I have this very good relationship with Mitch, but he does very different work to mine. So there's not that much crossover. You know, we've had to work side by side, we drive each other nuts. I'm the dominant force, it's my studio, it's my voice, I'm very particular. You know, God knows what he's had to put up with, but. Thank gosh, he's strong. We, we physically try not to lift too much anymore, but quite often I get told: Oh, everyone's come in, we've got quotes, we can't move it. You know, this is like artwork that's sitting in collector's houses. And you guys just did it with such ease when you came and did it. And so can you help us out? And so we'll have to go back to de install our own sculpture if it's going to get moved somewhere, because they're like, wow, we had like three huge moving guys in here and they couldn't move it. And then you two scrawny guys can just do it.



[01:06:45] Alex Seton: And it's like, yeah, we've been working on this our own time. We know how to move the thing. We know the weight, the balance of it all. Experience tells you how to move weight without too much effort. It's not actually all muscles and strength and straining. It's just about the right equipment and all that sort of thing.



[01:06:59] Alex Seton: And of course, we're intimately familiar with the creation of the object as well. But I mean, mine's very specific because it is so heavy. And I try to do things like hollow it out, bring down the weights and all that sort of stuff, just to make it more practical for everybody involved.



[01:07:12] Alex Seton: It's not just me.



[01:07:13]



[01:07:13] Alex Seton: No, but yeah, you're right. Handling and all of those technical things. I think they're kind of easy to do now. I really don't favor or think too much about the technical side now. I know what a work needs. For me, as I get older, it's only the concept that is an obsession for mine.



[01:07:31] Alex Seton: The magic has gone off the physical act of carving, though I still do love it and enjoy it. But the shine has gone off it. Like, it's a little boring. I listen to a lot of podcasts now. Because of input and time and familiarity. I've evolved and changed over time.



[01:07:47] Anastasia: Well, name drop! What's your favourite podcast to listen to in the studio at the moment?.



[01:07:52] Alex Seton: moment? At the it's pretty immature. so there's a bunch of different art podcasts that are great, including yours. There's um, it's called Between Two Curators. It was only for a spell during COVID. Jenn Ellis, and I'm forgetting the other host name, there's quite a good analysis of English artists.



[01:08:14] Anastasia: Mm hmm.



[01:08:15] Alex Seton: But I listen to a lot of film podcasts. I really like film as an art form. I think it's quite inspiring. And so I listen to a lot of that and a lot of world news.



[01:08:25] Anastasia: You've worked with several commercial galleries by now, I'd imagine. Can you maybe shed some light on how those relationships started? How would an artist get into a commercial gallery?



[01:08:42] Alex Seton: Oof.



[01:08:44] Anastasia: Especially making something that's maybe not as obvious as small sculpture or .. painting.



[01:08:51] Alex Seton: Yeah. So you have to have good documentation first. 'Cause if you can't show them tangibly, it's very difficult. Cause you're first and foremost a visual artist. Doesn't matter how well you talk up your work. But I would say the big thing that still remains true, for all commercial galleries, is you need to know that you can work with each other. So a square conversation with the person in charge is really, really good. But how they discover your work, well, less and less have I met gallery directors who really like being cold called or approached. almost impossible.



[01:09:22] Alex Seton: So before the conversation that you'll get to have, someone really needs to recommend you. And I think the best one is other artists. Other artists who are in that stable. If they like your work and respond to who you are, will speak up for you. And that's probably your best way of getting into a commercial gallery now.



[01:09:41] Alex Seton: I think commercial galleries are always looking for talent, no matter what they say, they can say we're full up, but I'll always make a little bit more room for that talented artist that they're quite interested in. And if they have enough of their artists saying, Hey, you really should check out this person's work, a gallerist will at least take the meeting, or someone from that gallery will take the meeting. And that counts for a lot.



[01:09:59] Alex Seton: I think having commercial representation, and maybe that's changed over time, but I think people have really embraced the idea of a commercial gallery as a huge resource and advocate for the artist. Because they are a huge resource, they know a lot, and they have strong histories with artists from a region And they'll be very active on the scene. They need to be very active on the scene.



[01:10:16] Alex Seton: I think there's a new appreciation for being represented and what that can bring. Particularly post COVID, I think there was a world moving away from artists being represented and more just freelancing themselves on Instagram in particular. But we all saw that the artists that survived particularly well during COVID were all represented by some of the more traditional manner. If only because those collectors were business owners and they were getting fees for all the people they employed. There was a lot more money around and they were spending it on art because they were staring at blank spots in their walls, in their collection and thinking I really should get an Alex Seton. Or whatever. That was an aberrant time, it was a unique Set of conditions there. That doesn't always happen. But I just think there's a new appreciation for what a commercial gallery can bring, If only to free you up from the amount of time you spend on marketing yourself versus actually producing work. And that's the big benefit, that's the huge benefit.



[01:11:09] Alex Seton: And I've only had four or five commercial galleries. Starting off with Maunsell Wickes Gallery and then represented by Jan Murphy for a very long time, Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane for 14, 15 years. Sullivan and Strumpf for 15 years. And then small shows with, and some representation by international galleries like, Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris, and UNIT Gallery in London.



[01:11:34] Anastasia: Mm-Hmm.



[01:11:35] Alex Seton: So those have been good. But I think you need to be in the scene that you're in. You need to be part and present with it, and it's very hard to be represented when you're not, actively present on that side of the globe. And it's possible, but it's much harder, and particularly for a sculptor, when they don't want to ship your expensive work, and the price of shipping post COVID went through the roof.



[01:11:55] Anastasia: Yeah.



[01:11:55] Anastasia: And so



[01:11:56] Alex Seton: it's been really hard to maintain any sort of professional discourse that they're super enthusiastic about that doesn't cost them an arm and a leg.



[01:12:03] Anastasia: Yeah, I've had some people in the UK reach out to me, wanting to show my installation.



[01:12:10] Alex Seton: Oh yeah.



[01:12:11] Anastasia: And I was like, sure, just pay for the shipping, you know. I got them quotes and they got their own quotes and then they were like, are you sure you can't just come and do it in the in the course of the installation? I'm like, it took me two two years



[01:12:26]



[01:12:26] Anastasia: to make this room.



[01:12:29] Alex Seton: See that'ss thing, isn't it? If you were to unpick the hours you put into any particular artwork, people just go insane. People who are number crunchers, like if your accountant asks you to unpick everything that goes into, well, how'd you get to the sale price? Then you, then you go through all that hourly rate and things, and then it starts to drop as soon as you start seeing what the sale price is, and you're like, oh.



[01:12:50] Anastasia: Yeah.



[01:12:50] Alex Seton: People go mad, like, you just go mad. Particularly with sculpture and sculptural installations, like, it's just how long is a piece of string? There's so many variables and effort and long hours that go into it. It's very hard to account for them by traditional accounting methods and business billing and hourly rates and things like that.



[01:13:06] Alex Seton: It's always results driven and then a premium put on top for concept and where you are in your professional practice and how much your voice is out there. It's slowly built over time.



[01:13:17] Alex Seton: So to get back to your original question, how do you found those relationships? The first one was via other artists, was definitely my first intro. I think having a few awards and sort of an awareness of my work, put it out there. Definitely the awards helped. But then I said no to a lot of commercial galleries, like a lot..



[01:13:35] Anastasia: They approacheded you and..?



[01:13:37] Alex Seton: Yeah, quite popular names, um, who I just didn't get along with. Life's too short to work with people you don't get along with.



[01:13:44] Anastasia: You thought you couldn't work with them



[01:13:46] Alex Seton: I found them



[01:13:47] Anastasia: level?



[01:13:48] Alex Seton: Just couldn't work with them. I found them too non disclosure, or cryptic, or maybe just not willing to be specific and concrete. I didn't like that. I don't like vague promises. I did have the non artist side of me, that kind of entrepreneurial business side go, No, no, no, offer me something concrete, otherwise it's not real. This is not real. Because there's a lot of guff and puff in the art world. And some of these very well known gallerists were just offering me weird things. Vague, undescribed opportunities. And you're like, no, no, no, I can't work with you.



[01:14:21] Anastasia: Interesting.



[01:14:21] Alex Seton: You're just fishing. It's a fishing trip. It's not real.



[01:14:24] Anastasia: It's Mhm



[01:14:26] Alex Seton: So I was very specific about what I wanted. And so when I met the gallerists that I've had, all of them are very tangible, concrete, real people, lovely, warm, enthusiastic, genuine in their sincere offers. And it was great. It's tangible. Somebody you can get to sink your teeth in and go, yeah, I can work with you, you're real great. Yeah, and I found that I'm very proud with all the gallerists I have, that they're the nicest Australian art world.



[01:14:48] Anastasia: Mm. Do you have contracts with the galleries you work with?



[01:14:53] Alex Seton: Absolitely. Anyone that doesn't offer you a contract is also a fool for themselves. Like, they're not trying to rip you off. They're also doing themselves a disservice. Because it's about protecting both of you, about expectations within that relationship.



[01:15:09] Anastasia: I feel



[01:15:10] Anastasia: like there's still a lot of that kind of vague handshake stuff going on, even today. Surprisingly but.



[01:15:17] Alex Seton: Yeah but it's super easy to just insist upon a contract. Like it's so standard now, it's ridiculous. If anyone says no, we're not comfortable with that, you go: great, I'm not comfortable with that.



[01:15:25] Anastasia: Yeah.



[01:15:26] Alex Seton: And some people are fine with it. If you're ok with it, you're ok with it. Just know that there's lots of risks involved because it means that at any one time they could just not be involved with you. You want a certain commitment for a certain amount of time. The The best way of guaranteeing that is a contract.



[01:15:39] Alex Seton: Or at least a written agreement that in some terms outlines what you're intending to do with each other. I think what artists don't realize is they have a lot more power. Your creativity, the thing they're after is specifically you. It doesn't look like anyone else. So it's only for you. That specific opportunity is only for and wouldn't exist without you. And so you can withdraw that at any time. So I would say to any young artist: you have a lot less to lose than you think, and a lot more to offer than you think. As in, you're not going to lose anything by saying no.



[01:16:11] Anastasia: I wanted to ask you



[01:16:15] Anastasia: about a hard truth you've had to learn as an artist.



[01:16:17] Alex Seton: Oooh... Realizing that Like, as you can tell, I'm a talker. When I was a young precocious artist, I was talking about all my ideas rather than doing them. And I think one of the hard truths is that nobody cares. Like just...



[01:16:33] Alex Seton: And and I know that sounds really brutal, but what I mean is nobody cares up until the moment you've shown them the thing. Because then they suddenly want to pay attention.



[01:16:42] Alex Seton: Because I think there's lots of ideas out there all the time. And it's those that take them out, run with them, see them out to their fullest, best expression of it, that show us something we didn't expect or know or even care to know until the moment we saw it. So, yeah, that's a hard truth, like at some point you just realise, no, no, it's in the doing that it all comes out. So, I mean, it's lucky for someone like me who loves making, like loves it, like otherwise I wouldn't have worked this hard. But the brutal truth is that as someone who is pretty social and loves to chat, Obviously, because I spend tons of time by myself, so I'm like out in the world going, Ooh, I want to talk.



[01:17:21] Anastasia: Hehe.



[01:17:21] Alex Seton: But realizing that really nobody cares about those ideas until you've shown them. For visual artists, let's say, because of course we're living in a world when dialogue is more respected now. Like the rise of the podcast has done that I think. I think a huge part of being a professional artist now in the last decade has suddenly involved artist talks. People really want to know what the inside is, where you've come, what that journey is, connect with it.



[01:17:46] Alex Seton: So it's no longer true as much as I think it is. But I think for me, I just, the first one I really felt, I'm like, oh yeah, nobody cares when I'm just talking about these great ideas saying, look how great I am.



[01:17:56] Anastasia: Ha ha ha!



[01:17:56] Alex Seton: I hadn't even made a single fucking



[01:17:58] Alex Seton: thing yet.



[01:17:59] Alex Seton: The other hard truth is actually some of the worst... Some of the biggest fights you'll have professionally are with fellow practitioners. And I don't mean artists, I mean people within the art sector. Who, for whatever reason, limited budgets put upon by their institutions, run by governance that is non art based, they're the biggest arguments you'll ever have. They're the biggest violators of artists rights. Museums, the cultural institutions. They violate artists rights all the time.



[01:18:27] Alex Seton: They don't pay them well, or they ask them to somehow compromise their artwork. They're the biggest sinners around. And the calling them into the account is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. Is one of the hardest things to do, because you still have to professionally work with them. And What I would say is that every artist should speak about those experiences more. Because yeah, some of the institutions have been very poorly behaved over the years and they need to be better.



[01:18:52] Alex Seton: And the only reason to call them out, of course, is to say: we want you to be better. We'reasking you to be better. The majority of these institutions are government funded. We are taxpayers like anyone else. And we're also stakeholders because we're part of the content generation for your institutions. Calling them out is a big thing and it's very hard to do and I learned the hard way that it's actually worthwhile. It's worth doing.



[01:19:16] Alex Seton: So I would say to every artist when you come up against institutions that are reluctant or unwilling to do the right thing, saying so publicly in a polite way and powers with you with your social media to be from your voice, and you'd be Respectful and you want them to be better it's the right thing to do.



[01:19:33]



[01:19:33] Anastasia: Can you be more specific?



[01:19:35] Alex Seton: I mean, the Heritage New South Wales, that whole commission and saying, I'm very disappointed the commission's gone for all Australian artists. So I'm very glad to hear that it's back. But I think it's important to have said so. During that whole era, early 2023, I had a lot of artists saying, Oh, thanks for letting us know what that is. And we also don't know why that happened. And people want to know, people are invested in these things. We believe in our institutions, or we want to believe in our institutions. And that they can be better. And so it's never actually a slight on those institutions at all.



[01:20:04] Alex Seton: Institutions are only as good as the people in it. And there's many different reasons that are non malevolent, why they may not be able to do the best thing. And saying so is not a bad thing. Saying, Hey, you can be better is not a bad thing. Some institutions react very poorly to it and some react very well. Yeah. I think we demand better out of them so that they can be better. I just wanted to say that.



[01:20:26] Alex Seton: It's a real hard learning that the best financial and commissioning experiences have all been from big commercial institutions. They pay well, they understand the autonomy of the artist. They're coming to you because they don't have it within their own walls. They tend to be excellent. My worst experiences are all with Government run institutions. Because they're big authoritarian bureaucracies, that do things a very specific way, and if they can save even a little bit of dollar and not respect the artists, even just a little bit, at that sacrifice, they'll do it.



[01:21:01] Anastasia: Mm.



[01:21:02] Alex Seton: Because they're required. Because they don't see individuals. Not really. Not not well.



[01:21:07] Anastasia: That's a really interesting insight.



[01:21:08] Alex Seton: Yeah. And um, you know, having said that, there's some extraordinary people in those institutions as well. And often they have to fight the good fight on many different fronts, with limited budgets, and they'll do the best that they can.



[01:21:20] Alex Seton: So we have institutions like National Association for the Visual Arts that fight for better artist fees and remuneration of every kind. And there's Arts Law to back you up. There's um, Copyright Agency and resale royalty scheme. I'm gonna be running for that actually, as a director position for the copyright agency coming up.



[01:21:40] Alex Seton: There's a few other artists who are doing that. It's a good sign that there's more people interested in their rights and how they're expressed and defended. Artists are getting onto boards and to artists reference boards and saying, Hey, what about us? That's actually my real hobby. That's where I spend, that's the one I spend most time on.



[01:21:56] Anastasia: Your secret hobby is being on boards of...



[01:21:57] Alex Seton: No, the idea of artist rights. You need to be able to push that.



[01:22:01] Alex Seton: Yeah, and being on boards. I've been on a lot of boards. And sometimes they're successful and sometimes they're not I'm, sure I was terrible on them to begin with. But just being in the room where the decisions are made is really important and to have an artist's voice in that room is really important. And that's thankfully, I think, changing for the better. The professionalisation of artistic practice... you know, there was always the fear that you'd lose the savant kind of thing. Actually, no, just Behaving well and professionally, it's just raised the bar for everybody.



[01:22:30] Alex Seton: And so the expectations of artists and their voices and the respect for those voices has gone up too.



[01:22:36] Alex Seton: It's also about believing in those very specific institutions. I like them and so I attend them and then people see that I'm interested and they ask, Oh, would you be interested in part of the governance? That happens over time, it's not like something you can pursue. It wasn't happening when I was a young artist. I think they want the voices of people who have experience in many different levels.



[01:22:57] Anastasia: You mentioned something about, having to be in the scene and also the cost of shipping work. As in, you are planning to move to Europe for a while. So, coming back to this question of your experience



[01:23:19] Anastasia: of living and working in Australia, but also wanting to be an international artist.



[01:23:25] Alex Seton: yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, these last Decade in particular, I've been crossing over to Europe and making work over there to be displayed there and occasionally sending work from Australia. But the sending of work was always expensive. And then post COVID was unbelievably expensive. As in it quadrupled!



[01:23:43] Alex Seton: I had a show with Unit London, online show. And they sold the work and it was going to be distributed to all the different parts of the globe, which was great. It was all sold.



[01:23:51] Alex Seton: And about half the sales dropped out because the shipping was more expensive than the individual artworks. And my work isn't cheap. And



[01:23:58] Anastasia: That's Insane!



[01:23:59] Alex Seton: Yeah, to get to like a sculpture park in Connecticut, could have been costing a fortune! Like we're talking $25,000 or something ridiculous. And the work was 22, or whatever.



[01:24:10] Alex Seton: It was, you know, they just dropped it like a bag of bricks. Of course they did. And



[01:24:15] Anastasia: Yeah.



[01:24:16] Alex Seton: I tend to say that it's not about necessarily being present, as in physically present. But I think it's different with sculpture and installation. I think there's a higher logistical expense. And so commercial galleries are less willing to be involved with that. It's not that they're less willing, they're just more hesitant about the opportunity and how much money they invest in that. So being there helps if you produce locally. But being there really means being part of that conversation, that social world around that gallery and being there in the right hours. So I've tried to maintain that but I'm out of that time zone and it's hard to be part of the conversation when you're sleeping.



[01:24:55] Alex Seton: So it's also been much better and easier to be part of Southeast Asia. Sullivan Strumpf have a gallery in Singapore. We've been participating in art fairs for the last decade in Hong Kong, Singapore. Sullivan Strumpf go to Taipei as well and Jakarta and things like that.



[01:25:09] Alex Seton: I'm proud to be a Southeast Asian artist, like really, that's what it kind of is. And certainly the curators you speak to from the greater region, treat Australia as part of that region and it's great. And so like Kochi Biennale in 2016 was one of my career highlights. I loved being part of that and that was really enjoyable to talk with artists about a very particular kind of experience.



[01:25:30] Alex Seton: It's so extraordinary to talk to, say Abdul Abdullah and Amrita Hepi they're a couple and they live in Thailand, they're in Bangkok. And also, they're Perth artists that have had a relationship with Bangkok going way back and the artists there.



[01:25:48] Alex Seton: It's extraordinary. It's a different kind of collaboration that we don't really have on this eastern seaboard in Sydney. It's not so easy to get to anywhere. But they're like a little six hour flight, which is the same to Sydney. And it's extraordinary to see that and visit them in Bangkok recently and see the sort of different way Australian art is viewed.



[01:26:05] Alex Seton: You know, talk to senior artists like Janet Laurence or even Richard Bell. Richard Bell is one of our most well known contemporary artists in the world. Australian artists, I should say. And still his commercial opportunity is limited because you just can't be everywhere. For an Australian artist, it's just so much more difficult just to be out there.



[01:26:24] Alex Seton: The real focus is on a more traditional Australian indigenous painting because it is fascinating and extraordinary and also contemporaneous. Like, it's, it's all the larger international art world wants to know about Australia. And that's kind of interesting too. And so it's harder for contemporary Australian urban artists, and non indigenousous, to make it out into the larger world. Because we're seen as a, sort of, or assumed to be generic western experience, which we're also not. We're also something else. We're also something particularly interesting, which I believe in.



[01:26:54] Alex Seton: And you can see the tide turning, and say Archie Moore's Wind of the Golden Lion in Venice is such a great boon for Australian contemporary art, just generally. Because of the extraordinary nature of that work, and its scope, outward looking to the world. You know, it's such a success, so, I do believe in being an Australian artist. But I do have some projects over there, I am going to go there and do them. I'll be gone for a little bit that makes me sad because I also just like being here and I'm very proud to be an Australian artist.



[01:27:21] Anastasia: But have you done something like that before where you go away for an extended period?



[01:27:26] Alex Seton: Yeah, And they've always been some of the most productive periods. Because I go away, question everything about my practice, immerse myself in making in a different context that's outside of the daily professional life of being an Australian artist and daily commercial gallery pressures to be at things and attend different things. Yeah, they've always led to very productive years in the future. So I look forward to them and I see them as what do you call it, sabbaticals away from, from regular life.



[01:27:55] Anastasia: Like an extended residency.



[01:27:57] Alex Seton: And those extended residencies have always been the best for my practice. So some of my best experiences have been like Upstate New York in Art Omi



[01:28:05]



[01:28:06] Alex Seton: or at the American Academy in Rome.



[01:28:08] Alex Seton: All of these are minimum three month residencies that just take you away. You can focus. It's a rare and beautiful privilege to be able to do that.



[01:28:17] Anastasia: Yeah. It's definitely on my bucket list.



[01:28:20] Alex Seton: Mhm. I would advise every artist to absolutely apply for all of them. Particularly those that have the physical spaces for creating. Particularly if we're talking about art installation and sculpture, because we all know that they're much more limited in terms of their spaces and how central they are to whatever city or town that you're in.



[01:28:40] Alex Seton: Some of those residencies are deliberately sequestered away in nature, and they have another special and very extraordinary thing.



[01:28:47] Anastasia: Talk to me about that, actually. Because this is something I personally wonder about. Like, how would a sculptor or an installation artist do a residency? Because you can't bring all your tools.



[01:29:02] Alex Seton: Mm.



[01:29:03] Anastasia: And then if you make something quite extensive there... yeah. what, what happens to that? Do you leave it there? Do you destroy it? Do you bring it with you?



[01:29:13] Alex Seton: Yeah. I can give detail of like an experience of mine that would sort of answer it a little bit. It was Art Omai in upstate New York. It's been running for 30 odd years or something. This residency started by Francis Greenburger. Very successful American billionaire who loved the arts and wanted to go and start, in his words, a super collaborative artist residency experience. So lots of artists, lots of curators, lots of people just all collide and eat together, live together, chat creativity.



[01:29:41] Anastasia: Actually,two of my previous guests have done that as well.



[01:29:45] Alex Seton: Oh, right. Fantastic. Well I went in 2012 and we're lucky enough to have continued sponsored position



[01:29:51] Anastasia: mm.



[01:29:51] Alex Seton: By an Australian arm of people who see the value in that residency. Which is really ironic considering the residency was started up in reaction to a bunch of very poorly behaved Australian artists in the Triangle Residency in Brooklyn.



[01:30:03] Anastasia: Really!?



[01:30:04] Alex Seton: Andd Francis Greenburger said: I just swore to myself I did not want it to be like them. And as some of the metal sculptors of Sydney from the 70s, who were just very poorly behaved. Really poorly behaved, like awful, awful, awful human beings. And, It was started in reaction to them and how they policed people's behavior and other artists and drove out particularly females from the industry and were just bullying. He's like, Nope, I want to create a residency that is absolutely collaborative. He says it in his book, actually. If you read the Francis Greenburger book, he details his motivations there.



[01:30:37] Anastasia: Yeah.



[01:30:38] Alex Seton: Yeah, it's an extraordinary time when you're there. And there's a huge amount of like barn space, so lots of big sculpture studios. And I'm going and I'm like, I've carved lot of heavily carved materials and I'm not going to go and carve marble there. There's no way, no how.



[01:30:56] Alex Seton: But at that time I was very interested in unpicking what is it about the labor that people get so fascinated with when you put in a lot of physical, technical effort. I'm like, that's so boring that that's the thing that people, can't you see the concept? And I was like... conflicted artist who wanted to unpick that. And I sat there and At some point I did realize I needed to go and get a bit of marble just to break it down, like physically in front of the camera I wanted to break it down and cook it literally cook it into quicklime, like convert the materials themselves.



[01:31:24] Alex Seton: The labour itself, I went on a run in the sculpture park, filmed it every day, and that became the sculpture. It was tracing a physical line within the landscape with my body. That became the sculpture instead. So it became performance, it became documentation. I couldn't do what I was normally doing, but boy, it was that learning curve for me and freeing in so many ways.



[01:31:43] Alex Seton: I went and got some old road markers, drove up to the quarries and artist stone sculpture studios of Vermont, which is like a couple of hundred kilometers to the north. Went and visited them, brought back some old mile markers, which I did some ink work on. No carving, no carving at all. I donated those works as a gift to the institution that is still in the house today. And I was very pleased to do that. Like that's,



[01:32:06] Anastasia: mm-Hmm.



[01:32:06] Alex Seton: that's just what it is. I think you have to be aware that you may just have to leave it behind. It's just maybe too expensive. I know other former Australian Art Omi attendees who've gone, worked the entire time, made a huge amount of work, and then had to ship it back slowly and to no avail. But what they really missed out on was the idea of sitting down with curators and writers and people in the art scene from New York that Francis Greenburger arranged to come and meet everybody.



[01:32:33] Alex Seton: And they'd wonder round the studios. And if you aren't open to it, if you're just working away, they won't disturb you. Whereas I went to the local bottle shop, bought a bunch of alcohol, made gin and tonics for everybody, and sat around chatting. Like, you avail yourself of the opportunity, depending on what you feel like you want to do.



[01:32:49] Alex Seton: But certainly I would say that maybe residencies aren't for making. They're about developing ideas. Is their main contribution I have to a practice. And then connections. But development of those ideas comes in many ways by yourself and through talking and discussing with others. Finding the people that think like you or have at least a creative friction that you can bring to each other, that can inspire you. Yeah. Finding where your inspiration sits is really important.



[01:33:16] Anastasia: Mm.



[01:33:17] Anastasia: Good point. Tell me about the sustainability aspect in your practice. I've heard things about recycling the refuse from your work?



[01:33:26] Alex Seton: So one of the benefits of having a practice that embraces the medium of marble, is that actually, a lot of the material is reusable. So the dust can be used in painting ground, it's calcium carbonate so it can be used as a fertilizer, just as a base material. You can throw it on the garden, it can relieve the acidity of the soil but mostly it's Painters used to collect it for painting grounds. Now I give it to a bunch of young designers who have a firm called Natural Brick Company, and they produce terrazzo from the rubble and the dust. And they make terrazzo bricks and breeze blocks and all kinds of things that are bespoke projects. And I'm very happy for them to do that because they use everything. They use it all. And that's very



[01:34:03] Alex Seton: satisfying. And then there's some artists like Jamie North, who does these big concrete installations from slag and slag material and grow organic material from that, who can use the marble dust in that slag as part of industrial waste, because mine's an industrial practice. And it forms the basis of the main fertilizer from which all of those green plants grow out of his work.



[01:34:25] Anastasia: Great.



[01:34:25] Alex Seton: Yeah. It's from my marble dust. So just very aware of that and became more and more aware of that in more recent years. I think there's an ethics of material that comes in the light of the Anthropocene that All artists have to acknowledge the ethical use of their materials in some way, or at least reckon with in their own consciousness and conscience. About what is their comfort level of the material and the medium they've chosen.



[01:34:47] Alex Seton: And what was a delight to find in my later years is that, one, after making sure that we do proper attribution of every stone and its traditional land of origin because we're talking about natural material pulled from Australian soil that has never been ceded, land that has never been ceded. I think the very least we can do is to acknowledge that say Wombeyan marble when I use that is from the traditional lands of the Gundungurra people. It's just a polite thing to do. And learning that the marble there used to be used as filler for toothpaste. And it has all these interesting industrial uses and commercial uses that weren't just architecture and art.



[01:35:23] Alex Seton: Fascinating, just fascinating. And then looking at my impact and footprint. Like, you know, we used to pay people to come to the studio just to get rid of the dust. It would actually all go to road fill, which is perfectly benign, but it's better than landfill. But I thought we could do better than that.



[01:35:40] Alex Seton: You could use this beautiful material. It's just a shame to just waste it. You know, because it's quite a refined output. There's very few inclusions in there. Yeah, it was about finding an ethical way for me practically in the studio. But also the reuse of the material to something more interesting, because it's a compelling material, even in waste form.



[01:35:58] Anastasia: I'm also curious about the storage aspect. Do you work project or commission based? Or do you just make work because you need to make stuff?



[01:36:11] Alex Seton: Yeah, I do the latter. in recent years I've switched on the switch and told Sullivan and Strumpf, yeah, yeah, if collectors want to commission a work, they can, here's some drawings of stuff I haven't made yet. I don't let them commission, like, previous work. That's going backwards, and I don't like that. But I've switched that switch off again, because it just... I'm time limited in the studio. We're now getting booted out. The studio is going to be developed in April of next year.



[01:36:33] Alex Seton: It's 15 years. It was a good run in Newtown, Sydney. Resisting gentrification, for want of a better word. Like the classic. There used to be a 120 artists or something in Gladstone Street, Newtown. Now there's only us. Just us. And it's a real shame.



[01:36:50] Alex Seton: And the affordability has just gone out the window anyway. It's time to move on. And so I need to focus on the few works that I will know I can make in that time. And that's it. So I've turned off all commissions and don't do them anymore. But what it means is, yes, I have my own stock of material and I'm just eating into that with my desires.



[01:37:07] Anastasia: And then when you finish a piece, you go to your gallery and you're like: here you go, sell that, or?



[01:37:12] Alex Seton: Yeah, I try to fi 'em in bodies of work so that they can either choose to do an exhibition or choose how they're gonna present them or sell 'em off to clients. They can always do a little online store type presentation as well, you know, that that happens from time to time.



[01:37:25] Anastasia: Mhm.



[01:37:25] Alex Seton: But it's very rare. For me it's show to show because I don't make a huge amount of work every year. I make a lot, but not a huge amount. Not compared to, say, your average painter .



[01:37:34] Anastasia: Yeah. a If you had a magic wand and you could make anything, anywhere, whatever material, location...



[01:37:46] Alex Seton: ooh yeah!



[01:37:47] Anastasia: No budget, what's your dream project?



[01:37:51] Alex Seton: Oh my goodness! Dream project.



[01:37:57] Alex Seton: I genuinely would love to, there's in Carrara, so in the traditional foothills where marble's been quarried for the last 4, 000 years, the industry is just there. There's an extraordinary quarry called uh, Cabo Michelangelo that produces an extraordinary stone, but they can break out a block that's twice the size of the average bus.



[01:38:20] Alex Seton: And there is a sculptor I love called Not Vital. That's his actual name. And it's a traditional Swiss name. And he made this extraordinary work that represented a very particular tragedy in Northern Africa. And he hollowed out these houses from these blocks. You could walk into these whole houses made in stone.



[01:38:41] Anastasia: Carved out of a single piece?



[01:38:43] Alex Seton: Out of a single block and it, and it's such a flourish and a conceit. But what was extraordinary is that these dilapidated houses that were, I think from a very particular conflict. So there were bombed out and. There's a sort of beauty and a tragedy to everything that's represented within that, those sort of three layered space. Anyway, long and short of it is, I knew the old guy who carved it. He and his sons carved it. The traditional artesiano craftspeople who worked marble for years. And I was there, we're talking to him when he goes, Bring, bring, bring, bring.



[01:39:15] Alex Seton: Pick up the phone. He's like, Oh, Not, Not, you're here. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We finished the work, explaining. And his face fell, and I'm like, And he got off the phone, he looked really sad. I'm like, you're right. We have to make another one.



[01:39:27]



[01:39:27] Alex Seton: He was just so exhausted from just making this one work. All I'm saying is, if I could get a hand on extraordinary resources, there is a work that I would like to do, but just using the, when you walk into the mountain, the keyhole quarry that is inside the mountain, the mountain peak is still there, but inside is hollow.



[01:39:45] Alex Seton: It's extraordinary quietness to that. I would like to make some form of a huge structure that would keep out all digital frequencies, all radio frequencies, anything except probably magnetic force. In order to have like a Faraday cage. And in order to have a sequestered temple of some kind.



[01:40:07] Alex Seton: A sequestered space that says you do not have to engage with anything but your own breath and voice. I would love to build that one day. That's a long winded answer to your question.



[01:40:17] Anastasia: That's big.



[01:40:18] Alex Seton: Yeah, so big and nobody's just going to give me a mountain.



[01:40:23] Anastasia: Tell me, where can people see your work, buy your work, learn more about you?



[01:40:32] Alex Seton: Very easy. uh, so I am represented by Sullivan Strumpf Gallery in Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore. You can always see my work with them. Their website is very good resource. I also have quite a good website myself at alexseton.com.



[01:40:47] Alex Seton: That's pretty comprehensive. It's not a full archive. It's been almost 10 years since my last book. So I'm really due for a book now. We're developing that up because I've done a lot of work in the last decade. It covers quite a few bodies of work.



[01:41:01] Alex Seton: Um, Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram @alexseton_ A L E X S E T O N underscore. You can follow me as the artist there, cause that'll be posts from the studio and updates on just regular daily shows and things like that. Artwork out and about, I think you could go to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to see two of my works there.



[01:41:21] Alex Seton: Have For Every Drop Shed and Anguish in the Garden opposite Dan Boyd's Indigenous Monument, as well as inside the As of Today Folded Flag work I was talking about earlier. And um, I think exhibition wise there's not too much on right now.



[01:41:34] Anastasia: Do you have anything coming up? What are you working on right now?



[01:41:37] Alex Seton: It's all projects in development that are in various stages of unconfirmed.



[01:41:42] Anastasia: Mm hmm.



[01:41:43] Alex Seton: so, yeah, watch this space.



[01:41:44] Alex Seton: Announcements to come soon, actually, which is really good. 47 year old who hasn't had a mid career survey, I don't think there's any entitlement or expectation that you should, but I'm excited to have one at some point and



[01:41:55]



[01:41:55] Alex Seton: hoping to be able to talk about that soon.



[01:41:57] Anastasia: That would be interesting to see!



[01:41:59] Alex Seton: Oh yeah. How to do that properly, oy.



[01:42:04] Anastasia: Yeah. You'd have to go to various collectors and be like, can I have that work for a while?



[01:42:11] Alex Seton: Yeah, yeah. We have this aeroplane tarmac and we're going to line them all up in one long row.



[01:42:14] Alex Seton: It was my favorite survey show of an artist. It was Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim some years back, I can't remember what year, maybe about a decade ago. It was called Everything. And it was just, everything was hung from one central rig from the ceiling. It was so good.



[01:42:34]



[01:42:34] Anastasia: He's a



[01:42:35] Alex Seton: trickster and a jokester anyway, and of course he's announced it as his final show, which of course it wasn't.



[01:42:40] Alex Seton: Fantastic. Yeah, very funny.



[01:42:43] Alex Seton: Yeah.



[01:42:44] Anastasia: Well thank you Alex, it's been very insightful.



[01:42:47] Alex Seton: Has it? Oh good!



[01:42:49] Anastasia: Yeah. A slightly different focus than the usual, but I love the career trajectory aspect we talked about. Great for artists who are listening I think.



[01:43:00] Alex Seton: Thank you for asking me on here.







Anastasia: That was Alex Seaton, based in Sydney. You can find out more about his work on his website alexseton.com, that's A L E X S E T O N dot com and on his Instagram @alexseton_.



e is represented by Sullivan Strumpf Gallery in Sydney. Links to those as well as everyone mentioned in this episode are in the show notes and on our website, installationartpodcast. com.



Did you enjoy this episode? Share it with a friend or a fellow art lover. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to help us grow, and we appreciate your support. Thank you for tuning in, and until next time.