Alex Seton: Last resort

Alex Seton’s interest in contemporary subjects from the personal to the political continues to have a profound influence on his work. For his most recent exhibition Last resort Seton explores notions of the utopian paradise represented through inflatable palm trees carved in Wombeyan marble that precariously rest upon their shore of remanent rubble. The association to island life, leisure and water-recreation, surfaces by extension through the rendering of a solitary oar and discarded inflatable lifeboats in suggested states of inflation and deflation.

While undeniably these works seduce and optically engage, it is the latent sense of menace that lurks beneath the surface of Last Resort’s idyllic sanctuary that unsettles. The idyll of strewn inflatable playtime objects, absent of human presence, are carved from stone, a material that is chosen for its dense and resilient virtues, rather than the buoyant qualities associated to the objects in which they refer. These objects of the ‘now’ stand as haunting reminders of the tremendous risks others face in the attempt to find solace and safety within brighter horizons.