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30 MAY - 23 JUNE 2012

GILES ALEXANDER

E=MC2?

148 New Bond StreetLondon W1S 2JTwww.faslondon.com

The Fine Art SocietyC O N T E M P O R A RY

Curator’s Foreword 1

Essay by Giles Sparrow

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Works

Eye on the Heavens 8Feudalism 11Nationalism 13Imperialism 15 Globalism 17Humanism 19Monotheism 21G.U.T (Grand Unified Theory) 22La Luna 25Saturn 27Titan 29Eye of God 30

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Studio shots 34

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CURATOR’S FOREWORDKATE BRYAN

In his first solo exhibition at The Fine Art Society Giles Al-exander makes an extraordinary statement of intent. Known widely and highly praised throughout Australia, where the British artist is based, Alexander has produced a visually compelling and conceptually provocative body of work.

His exhibition takes its cue from the current debate around Albert Einstein’s famous mass-energy equation, E=mc2? He asks if the cornerstone of modern physics can be called into question, how stable are our foundations and what can new knowledge mean to that which we hold dear? The result of an intensely active and inquiring mind, Alexander brings in philosophical thought and scientific discovery seamlessly into his beautiful paintings. More than simply loose inspira-tion, these carefully considered disciplines are at the heart of his practice.

The exhibition’s exquisitely rendered photo-realist oil paint-ings deal with ‘spaces’ that represent particular world views and power hierarchies, many of which are today being chal-lenged. The show includes religious buildings, parliaments, museums, UN headquarters, science experiments, and plan-ets. Alexander considers these closely held bastions of civi-lization with the idea of an existential ‘timeless geometry’ of the heavens. Even the timeless mystical notion of the uni-verse and space is on a daily basis being eroded as scientists reveal more insight into the volatile nature of the infinite, dynamic ‘heavens’ above.

Underpinning his interest in the cultural status of the im-age represented, is the very materiality of the work, always executed with a virtuoso academic ability. Alexander raises questions about the role of realist painting and authorship by sometimes revealing and sometimes hiding the painter’s hand. He explores concepts of looking through, at or upon by contrasting “contemporary” layers of resin and paint over “traditionally” oil glazed imagery, giving illusionistic depth while at the same time an acute awareness of surface.

In his seductive paintings Alexander represents the photo-realist architectural interiors floating and slightly distorted

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in a hyper-real deep-space environment. These figurative el-ements are suspended within optically deep black resined backgrounds, made all the more mysterious by the elliptical and orbital perspective. Alexander never forgets there is an audience for his work and continually assesses their perspec-tive, tilting, shifting and breaking their focus. These are paint-ings that demand closer inspection and reward sustained looking, not just visually but intellectually.

Kate Bryan

Head of Contemporary

May 2012

“In a time of increasing ecological uncertainty, human endeavors to better understand their place in the universe appear to be underpinned by a subconscious/conscious search for new territo-ries. Images generated by these first tentative steps outside the celestial cradle often have an ambiguity of authorship – heavenly bodies hanging in space, mind-bending distances away where no human finger can release the camera shutter.

Set against the potential of this exploration, these paintings draw on religious and historical iconography to present a literal relation-ship between what has provided definition to us in the past, the present, and to what lies ahead. Dislocated, set adrift in a celestial landscape, these icons of humanity – themselves a stand in for ‘civilisation’ – suggest an uncertainty, as homeless and adrift as their creators.”

Giles Alexander 2012

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AN UNCERTAIN LIGHTESSAY BY GILES SPARROW

On 23 September 2011, Einstein blinked. A team of scien-tists working at Italy’s Gran Sasso Laboratory emerged from their underground lair, tucked alongside the 10-kilometre au-tostrade tunnel that threads its way beneath the highest peak in the Apennines, to bask briefly and sheepishly in the glare of press attention from around the world.

The cause of all this interest? Apparent evidence that sub-atomic particles known as neutrinos, fired towards their OPERA experiment from the celebrated Large Hadron Col-lider some 731 kilometres away on the Franco-Swiss border, had arrived some 60 billionths of a second sooner than ex-pected.

Ordinarily, this might not have created so much as a ripple beyond the rarefied world of the scientific journals, but neu-trinos are rather special particles: near-massless nuggets of energy, they travel as close to the speed of light as makes no odds. To reach Gran Sasso from the LHC quite so quickly, it seemed they must have broken that hallowed c, the con-stant 299, 792.458 kilometres per second at which light itself propagates in a vacuum, and which forms the ultimate speed limit of the universe itself.

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c has stood as a cornerstone of modern science since the late 19th century, when astronomers and physicists finally confirmed the remarkable fact that light approaches us with the same speed from all directions, regardless of the relative motions of source and observer. From 1905 onwards, Albert Einstein rebuilt the Universe from the bottom up around this simple, undeniable fact, overturning centuries of Newtonian physics to bring us a strange new cosmos in which space and time are interrelated aspects of a continuum that can be exchanged for one another in extreme scenarios. Looking at situations in which objects approach the speed of light led him to the discovery that energy and mass are equivalent, also negotiable through that mighty equation, E=mc2.

Einstein’s discoveries shaped the world through the 20th

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century and beyond. Paving the way for both nuclear power and the bomb, each bringing with it attendant anxieties, they helped to forge the modern hierarchy of global power. Sci-entifically, they laid the foundations for the quantum physics that brings us increasingly close to understanding the heart of matter itself, yet at the same time carries its own vocabu-lary of uncertainty and strangeness, exclusion and spooki-ness, charm and quantum weirdness. Ushering in an age of relativity that we feel today as keenly as ever, they render the question mark in the title of Giles Alexander’s new exhibi-tion doubly appropriate: everything, it seems, is relative.

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Each of these dark, luxurious works resembles nothing so much as a window onto a different world. In some cases, this is exactly what they are – the luminous representations of La Luna, our ever-changing moon, the seemingly placid ringed beauty of Saturn, and the mysterious clouded atmosphere of Titan are the fantastical yet minutely detailed porthole views from a spaceship of the mind.

At other times, we see through a glass darkly, peering through the murk and reflection into human spaces that shape our experience of the world – the debating chambers of de-mocracy and globalism are here, but so are the cloisters and throne rooms of older and more secretive powers. In one case, the title offers us no clue – we find ourselves looking in upon an arcane space and pondering its purpose. And yet the uncertainty cuts both ways – today more than ever, ques-tions hang over the future of many of these long-established power structures.

Elsewhere again, we meet the challenges of modern science head-on. Both Grand Unifying Theory and The Eye of God cheekily juxtapose the kaleidoscopic structures of the Large Hadron Collider itself, the biggest machine ever built and a temple to the achievements of modern science, with the greater cosmic architecture of images captured by the Hub-ble Space Telescope. Eye on the Heavens, meanwhile, offers both a portrait of a great astronomer (Brian Schmidt shared in last year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in the discov-ery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating) and an interpretation of the techniques used in his work.

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The detail in the paintings is stunning – hyperrealistic repre-sentations of spaces and objects that we experience more usually through photography. The deep, smooth layers of resin that cover them blur the boundaries still further, im-parting a photographic gloss that both removes us from the images, making us work all the harder to interpret them, and inevitably ensures that we are ever-present within them. For such inherently dark images, light is everywhere, bouncing off the surface in unexpected directions: appropriately enough for subject matter that is often inspired by quantum physics, the very act of engaging with the work affects the nature of what we see.

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Since that brief, tantalizing “what if?” moment last September, the scientific establishment has mobilized swiftly to investi-gate the OPERA discovery. Detailed analysis of the Italian measurements soon pinpointed possible flaws, and inde-pendent experiments failed to provide any further evidence that the neutrinos were behaving unusually. A new set of measurements being conducted at Gran Sasso this month should settle the matter, but it seems unlikely that Einstein’s Universe will be overturned this time.

And yet there is always a next time. For all the advances in our knowledge of the Universe, there are still fundamental questions to be answered, and uncertainty remains. J.B.S. Hal-dane may have had it right when, on the cusp of the quantum age, he voiced his suspicion that:

“The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.”

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Feudalism 2012

150 x 93 cmOil and resin on polyester canvas

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Globalism 2012

105 x 65 cm cmOil and resin on polyester canvas

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Nationalism 2012


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Humanism 2012


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Imperialism 2012


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Monotheism 2012


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G.U.T (Grand Unified Theory) 2012


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La Luna 2012


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Saturn 2012


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Titan 2012


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Eye of God 2012

105 x 65 cm

Hand resined print edition of 5

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Eye on the Heavens 105 x 65 cm


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Born London, U.K.1975

2010 - ongoing MFA, National Art School, Sydney (pending)2009 - ongoing Lecturer, Painting/Drawing, National Art School . Sydney2006 1s t Class Honours (Painting), National Art School, Sydney2005 BFA (Painting), National Art School, Sydney1999 Diploma in Mixed Media, St Martins School of Art, U.K.1998 Diploma in Graphic Design, Kentish Town College, U.K.1995 First year BFA, 3D Design & Photography, Coventry University, U.K.1994 Diploma Art Foundation, Epping Forest College, U.K.

Awards, Scholarships and Residencies

2011 Fleurieu Art Prize, Adelaide, SA2011 Archibald Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, finalist2010 Arkley Award, Melbourne, Vic, finalist2010 Moran Prize, NSW State Library,2010 Archibald Prize, AGNSW, Sydney, finalist2010 RBS Emerging Artist Award, Sydney, finalist2009 Selected Works, Haunch of Venison Gallery, NY, USA2009 Duke Prize, Brisbane, Queensland, finalist2009 Wardlow residency, Melbourne, Vic2008 Duke Prize, Brisbane, Queensland, finalist2007 Duke Prize, Brisbane, Queensland, finalist2007 Metro 5 Prize, Melbourne, Vic, 1st Prize2006 Paddington Art Prize, Marlene Antico Fine Arts, Sydney, finalist2006 Art On The Rocks, Sydney, Highly Commended2006 Blake Prize, Touring Exhibition, NSW, ACT, Vic, Queensland

Finalist

2006 R & M McGivern Art Prize, Maroondah Art Gallery, Vic, finalist2005 Murray Sime Painting Prize, National Art School, Sydney, 1st Prize2005 MCQ International Art Prize, MCA Sydney, 1st Prize2005 Drawing Week, National Art School , 1st Prize2004 John Olsen Drawing Prize, Sydney, Highly Commended2004 National Art School, Awarded advanced standing2004 Propeller 04, Sydney, Peoples Choice Award1988 Bishops Stortford College, U.K. Art Scholarship (5 years)

Solo Exhibitions

2012 Know Thyself , Peter Walker fine art, Adelaide, SA2011 The Goldilocks region, GRANTPIRRIE, Sydney2010 Reproduction, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne, Vic2010 Spacetime, Peter Walker Fine Art, Adelaide, SA2009 Smoke ‘n’ Mirrors, Kristian Pithie Gallery, Melbourne, Vic2008 Neon Bible, Mori Gallery, Sydney2007 Engineering Consent, Mori Gallery, Sydney2007 Reverence, Mori Gallery, Sydney2002 Survey, The Labor club, Surry Hills, Sydney

GILES ALEXANDER

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Group Exhibitions

2012 Art London, The Fine Art Society, London2012 Hong Kong art fair, GRANTPIRRIE gal lery, Hong Kong2011 Step09, Milan Art Fair, Blackartprojects, Milan, Italy2011 (re)vision Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, NSW2011 ‘100’ BlackArtProjects, Melbourne, Vic2011 Wattle, Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong2010 Art London, Comodaa Gallery, London, U.K2010 ‘Lost in Painting’ Dianne Tanzer gallery, Melbourne, Vic2010 Hong Kong Art Fair, Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong2010 NOTFAIR, curated by Sam Leach & Ash Crawford, Melbourne2009 Sullivan & Strumpf , Extropian, curated by Sam Leach, Sydney2009 Comodaa Gallery, Australia Now, Covent Garden, London, U.K2009 Kristian Pithie Gallery, Same same but different, Melbourne, Vic2009 Innocence, Group Exhibition, Lorraine Pilgrim, Queensland2009 Drawcard 09, NAS Gallery, Sydney2008 Smithfields 140th Anniversary, Guild Hall, London, U.K2008 Carteret Islands, Group Exhibition, Mori Gallery, Sydney2008 Memento Mori, Group Exhibition, blkmrkt, Queensland2008 Drawcard 08, NAS Gallery, Sydney2007 Simply The Best, Group Exhibition, Lorraine Pilgrim, Queensland2007 Greens Fundraiser, Mori Gallery, Sydney2007 Solomon Fundraiser, Royal Australian Institute Architects, Sydney2007 Reverentia, Group Exhibition, Lorraine Pilgrim, Queensland2007 Group Exhibition, Mori Gallery, Sydney2006 Drawcard 06, National Art School, Sydney2006 Art Sydney 06, Hordern pavilion, Sydney2006 Inspiration comes of work, Group Exhibition, Kudos Gallery, Sydney2005 Degree Show, National Art School, Sydney2005 Infusion 2005, Fonas Group Exhibition. Cell Block Gallery. Sydney2004 Face Off, Group Exhibition, Stairwell Gallery, Sydney2004 Fonas Infusion, Group Exhibition, Cell Block Gallery, Sydney2002 Recent Works, exhibition, Global Gallery, Paddington, Sydney2002 Liverpool City Art Prize, Group Exhibition, Liverpool , NSW2001 Strawberry Jam, Group Exhibition, Surry Hills, Sydney2001 Recent Works, Basil Street Basement Gallery, London, U.K.2001 ORANGE, Group Exhibition, Global Gallery, Paddington, Sydney2000 BLUE, Group Exhibition, Global Gallery, Paddington, Sydney

Collections

ArtbankLondon Guildhall Art GalleryMCQ InternationalTweed River GalleryPrivate collections in Australia, UK, Europe, USA and SingaporePublications50 Most collectable Artists, Australian Art Collector, January 2011C. Miller, Profile, Australian Art Collector, September 2010A. Frost, The Rapture of Science, The Art Life, November 2009T. W. Lawrance, Australia Now: Contemporary Art, The Arbuturian.com, October 2009D. Rule, Around the Galleries, The Age, July 2009

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published in an edition of 800 copies bythe fine art society comtemporary148 new bond streetlondon w1s 2jt+44 (0)20 73181895+44 (0)20 [email protected]

for the exhibition

e=mc2?Giles alexander

30 may - 22 june 2012

isbn 978-1-907052-12-5

copyriGht Giles alexander and the fine art society contemporary 2012

photoGraphysevak dilanchian

desiGn ian brown

printed in the uk byartquarters press

this exhibition is dedicated to john pittuck, the art teacher of my formative years and sue clarke, my first patron.additionally i’d like to thank my family in General for their eternal support and my wife anna in particular for her love, patience and belief.

Giles alexander

Documents

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