Alex Asch

About the work

DIRECTLY- INDIRECTLY

 

I heard a radio interview with the South American author Isabel Allende. The interviewer asked her how she would like to be remembered she chuckled and said no one is remembered it is a patriarchal fantasy a masculine construct to make men feel better about dying. At that time, we were in lock down and I was spending much of my time rummaging through my collection of archived materials. I came across a bundle of early 20th century black and white photographs. The forgotten nurse, the forgotten businessmen, the forgotten wife, the forgotten soldier all have been misplaced, swept up in estate sales laying in piles like snowflakes unique and fragile but somehow generically similar inhabiting that country that is the past. Undoubtedly, they faced their own pandemics, Spanish flu, polio, cholera, and countless others. “The only thing we don’t know is the history we’ve forgotten”. I have placed my collection of forgotten souls on billboards and the scaffolding of our evolving cities, not on the gleaming towers built for the edification of men’s egos but on the suburban back streets with their shuttered shops and crumbling facades.

About the artist

Alex Asch was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA and was involved in university

art programs in Los Angeles and New York before moving to Australia and studying

art at the Australian National University in 1988. He has exhibited extensively in solo

and group exhibitions throughout Australia and provides technical assistance to

several arts organisations around Canberra. In 2017, Alex was awarded the CAPO Fellowship and was the recipient of the Workplace Research Associates Award by

CAPO in 2015.He was invited to represent Australia in 2009 Sculpture by the Sea in Denmark. He

has exhibited work at the Sydney Art Fair in 2013 and 2017, the Melbourne 2014 Art

Fair and was a finalist in the 2009 Blake Prize and 2017 CGS Harris Hobbs Outdoor

Sculpture Prize. He was invited to exhibit in 2016/18/20/22 Canberra Art Biennale –

Contour 556 and 2017/18/20 Pack Saddle at NERAM, 2021, Timeline CCAS.  Corporate collections in Australia, USA, UK Netherlands, National Australian Gallery, Artbank, the ACT Legislative, CMAG Assembly, the Wesley Art Foundation. Alex is Represented by Beaver Galleries