Alex Seton lives and works in Sydney, Australia. While his practice includes photography, video, augmented reality and installation, Seton is best known for marble carving, and frequently exploits our cultural assumptions about the forms of European classical sculpture to examine the underpinnings and anxieties of contemporary life.

Selected Works
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For Every Drop Shed In Anguish 2023

Photography by Mark Pokorny.

Refoulement, 2014
Installation view, Sullivan+Strumpf, Eora/Sydney.

The Patch (Tasmanian Tuxedo) 2022

Champagne marble from the traditional land of the Wakaman people (QLD) and Pilbara Green marble from the traditional land of the Nyamal people (WA)
65 × 58 × 28 cm

The Ghost of Wombeyan (a History of Forgetting) 2019

Wombeyan marble
110 × 110 × 226 cm

At the Foot of the Plinth 2021

Wombeyan marble
126 × 62 × 40 cm

Trying to Reinvent Themselves and Their Universe, 2022
Installation view, Sydney Contemporary 2023: Installation Contemporary, Carriageworks, Eora/Sydney. Photography by Mark Pokorny.

Alex Seton Refuge, 2015
Installation view, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, Kerala, India.

Life Vest (emergency), 2014
Installation view Refoulement, Sullivan+Strumpf, Eora/Sydney.

Paper Armada 2015

bianco carrara marble
largest: 12 × 25 × 12 cm
smallest: 6 × 12 × 6 cm
408 pieces in total

Dropcloth: Himation 2020

Wombeyan marble
30 × 25 × 60 cm

Oilstone #4: Saturated 2016

Bianco Carrara marble, engine oil, glass tank
47 × 98 × 24 cm

Half, 2013 (detail)
Installation view Roughing Out, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, New South Wales.

Drop Cloth: Tarkhan Dress 2019

Wombeyan marble
32 × 50 × 47 cm

Available Works
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About

Alex Seton

Biography

Lives and works on Gadigal Land/Sydney, Australia
Born 1977

Alex Seton lives and works in Sydney, Australia. While his practice includes photography, video, augmented reality and installation, Seton is best known for marble carving, and frequently exploits our cultural assumptions about the forms of European classical sculpture to examine the underpinnings and anxieties of contemporary life.

Seton’s studio practice has investigated the relationship between the individual and society, with a particular interest in the power structures that determine our attitudes and behaviour and affect our choices. This can take the form of explicit political commentary, whether on Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers (in Refoulement, 2014, Someone Else’s Problem, 2015, and The Island, 2017), or on government surveillance and displays of overt power (Elegy on Resistance, 2012 and Panoply, 2007). But Seton often also examines our expectations about cultural forms and traditions such as memorialisation, to question how we determine what has value and deserves to be recollected and valorised. This enquiry has critiqued the form and processes of art and materiality itself (Roughing Out, 2013, Cargo, 2018 and Once There, 2019), but also includes reflections on the reliability of personal memory and its role in the construction of the self and identity (Meet me Under the Dome, 2020, A History of Forgetting, 2022 and Permanent Good Stream, Some Rocks, 2022).

Seton has exhibited in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, the Canberra Public Art Festival, and Kunstenfestival Watou, Belgium, and in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Gertrude Contemporary, Fremantle Arts Centre, the Samstag Museum in Adelaide, and multiple regional galleries across Australia. He was the first Australian artist to win the Sovereign Asian Art Award in 2020 and was awarded the Mordant Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome in 2019. He also won the Contemporary Talents Prize at the Fondation François Schneider, Wattwiller, France in 2017.

In 2021, the Australian War Memorial awarded Seton the major Sufferings of War and Service commission for his work Every Drop Shed in Anguish, which opened in the Sculpture Garden in 2024. His work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian War Memorial, Newcastle Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, the Danish Royal Art Collection, Copenhagen and numerous other private and public collections.

Photography by Laura Baxter

Sullivan+Strumpf acknowledge the Indigenous People of this land, the traditional custodians on whose Country we work, live and learn. We pay respect to Elders, past and present, and recognise their continued connection to culture, land, waters and community.

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