Alex Young

A recycling of the present permeates my assemblages of natural materials and cultural artefacts. I collect discarded leftovers and remnants of nature: ash, tin cans, pulverised prescription pills, twigs, earth dug up from an industrial ruin. My work repurposes these remains, alienating from their past to form new narratives. Materials help me to make sense of time. Growth, transformation and the inevitable decay or destruction of matter generate my sculptures. I share this preoccupation with time, flux and the everyday with Arte Povera artists - Giuseppe Penone, Luciano Fabro and Janis Kounnellis are among my favourites. Their assemblages of mundane and craft materials, and fixing of time in transient materials is what I strive for in my work.

I work with metal because it’s strong and durable but endlessly forgiving and flexible. For me this process is like working through trauma - the failures and scars remain, but the metal transforms into something more interesting than before. I’ve been reflecting on feelings of hope and shame. My research of medieval music led me to the shame flute, an instrument of public humiliation used to punish “bad musicians”. I created my own shame flute using a bronze, a material rooted in ancient technologies. I’m interested in the late bronze age, an era that saw the rapid decline of vast empires. Historians believe the arrival of steel weapons, a lack of tin needed to create bronze, famine, climate change and displacement of peoples led to the collapse of these civilisations. This theory echoes current global supply chain shortages, war and environmental crisis. I combine bronze and steel in my sculptures to reference these historic transitions, creating relics that exist between past, present and future.

I’ve been casting medication in bronze: Keppra and Sodium Valproate prescribed for epilepsy and other “neurological disorders”. These pills have become a metaphor in my practice for the control of people that society classifies as disordered. I’m interested in the link between epilepsy, altered states of consciousness and the divine. In recent years there has been a resurgence of paganism and I’m curious about how ancient spiritual practices can be a way of reconnecting to the earth and regaining control. Rituals provide me with a sense of order in chaos, a way of demarcating time that sustains my practice. 

My practice examines 21st century materiality, blending physical, tactile media with digital film and sound. Contact microphones that record material surface vibrations have enabled me to record the sounds of my bronze sigils cast from twigs. I've sampled these into compositions that explore hidden voices of objects. By drawing connections between ancient history, an era of alchemy and magic, to the present age of science, I explore the idea that society is still rooted in archaic systems. Fragile forms are transmuted into relics and portals, as my work aims to portray the eerie uncertainty of life.