In-Store: recording local signs and displays 2020-2023
In-Store represents paintings from Alex’s two series Displays and Multi Signs. Both arise from his practice-led PhD doctorate investigating processes for depicting urban change. Displays records commercial still life/objects and signage from outside shops close to where he lives. Paintings of commercial signage installed alongside depictions of diverse objects such as delicatessen meats and running shoes are approached through messy, non-uniform image-making processes. Such approaches place the representations in a state of flux reflecting on the transitional state of the artist’s urban environment.
Similarly to images created in the Displays series, images from Multi Signs are expressively painted but focus entirely on commercial signs found in specific shopping strips. Like still life, the fonts create a community of interrelated identities. Perspective seems to flatten out and signage takes its layered place on delineated scaffolds. The typographic forms jostle for attention to form part of an immersive whole. Alex engages with signs to reflect on cultural diversity. His brightly painted images of signs often merge and are a metaphor for a suburb in transition.
In 2023 selected artworks were exhibited at two venues: RMIT University’s Site 8 Gallery and 484 Presents Gallery in Melbourne. At Site 8 Gallery the four Multi Signs paintings were installed side by side to present a typographic panorama. At 484 Presents Gallery selected artworks from the two series were hung to create an eclectic shopping environment in the context of the gallery that was once a traditional corner shop.
