Reinventing The Wheel
Reinventing The Wheel
Why did i give the piece this title?
We do have to reinvent the wheel with our thinking for the population at it’s current size to become fairer, feed itself without destroying the parts of the planet that we depend on.
We may see the people of Britain having to reconnect a little more with the food they are eating through paying higher prices or working the land once more.
Without the tractor tyre we’d still be using horses and ploughs and it seems as a symbol of man’s mastery over nature it has many positive connotations because it relates to so much saved labour. Of course this depends on your position. My idea of the tractor tyre as an ominous presence is no doubt founded in a deeply moving memory of a scene in the Grapes of Wrath where the protagonist dispossessed of his land by the bank, watches the arrival of machines, modern tractors and Caterpillars, the symbols of big agribusiness and the replacement of his own value.
That mastery of nature is an illusion on the planetary scale, and the tractor tyre is so often a villainous symbol whether playing its part replacing our remaining rain forests with palm oil plantations, hauling coal, or the very intensive farming associated with the dust bowels of America during the great depression and which today rely on so much chemical fertiliser.
At The Royal Academy Summer Show 2016
Bouillons Kub
If an ice cream van or a tube train, is an everyday spectacle of the English urban environment, then a tractor has a similar role in the countryside. The tractor has a great character and a great purpose.
I propose to build tractor-inspired sculptural elements from cardboard. The vision of the large looming tractor tyre particularly interests me.
The new work at Bouillons Kub will involve the same craftsmanship and planning. The sculptural forms will be based on a tractor, but will be more open to interpretation, by the viewer.
In conjuncture with these sculptures I will be exhibiting paintings inspired by local scenes. As a visitor to the area in 2011, I was drawn to the triangular black plastic prisms I saw glistening amongst the green fields. This was like a painting I had been trying to imagine, in which an object sits unnaturally but quite comfortably within the space of the picture.
I have discussed my project with Yusuf B'layachi, who is familiar with my art practice, and he has also previously visited the pays de Coutances. Yusuf will compose and play a piece of music to accompany the project.
Reinventing the Wheel William Alexander
In Reinventing the Wheel, William Alexander has made an object that sits comfortably in the gallery and works as pure sculpture. This is unlike his other cardboard works Icecreamvanman 2008 and Gondola 2016, which operate also as performance vehicles from within which the artist interacts with the viewer.
If an ice cream van is an everyday spectacle of the English urban environment, then a tractor has a similar role in the countryside. The tractor has great character and great purpose.
The vision of the large looming tyre as part of an ominous narrative was inspired by a visit to Normandy in 2011, where Alexander was drawn to undulating, triangular, black, plastic prisms, glistening amongst the green fields. Like a manifestation of the kind of paintings he was making, where the painter placed an artificial or invented form on an existing scene. With Reinventing the Wheel there is no scene, only the invented form.
The tyre is the part of the tractor which sets it apart from other vehicles allowing it to travel through heavy muddy fields, to see it celebrated in a material that would last no time at all in wet mud, yet seems to have the structure and almost inflated quality of a real tyre gives the mind a durable riddle. When laid flat the object reminds some of a particle accelerator.
This art work relies heavily on Apollonian craft, characterised by planning and control. The finished work is like an offering to this Greek god.
Reinventing the Wheel 2014, recycled cardboard, Bouillons Kub, Normandy
Reinventing the Wheel at Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2016
room curated by David Mach RA
Installing at Tripp Gallery 2016
