1973
Alex Frost
18 September - 28 October

1973 was an exhibition of large-scale drawings and sculptures that continued Frost's interest in a kind of impure or inbred Minimalism.  Although Frost has worked with a variety of materials and styles, his work is linked by an interest in the tension between a Minimalist tradition of modular repetition and a more gestural quality of the handmade.

"The control that Alex Frost exerts over his sculpture betrays a desire to be machine-like as a maker. There are templates or patterns or plans to follow. His work is modular. Things are built up from a number of similar elements. There is repetition. The materials are tools. There is structure then surface. He builds then decorates. What emerges is a whole made up of smaller parts.”

Karla Black, excerpt from the essay 'Idea Logic, or Self-made Machine Sculpture' from the publication which accompanied the exhibition.

At the core of the exhibition were three ceramic vases, sleek and finished in three different glazes, and modelled from a life-size template of the artist’s profile. The vases were erected on basic plinths, hidden within which were electric motors making it spin imperceptibly slowly.  These were accompanied by a series of pencil drawings on coloured, hand-printed graph paper, that use an encoded series of symbols to make tonal reproductions of photographs.  

Frost also borrowed a machine from a ceramicist to make a sculpture for the gallery’s unique window space: a long, thin pump-action tube that clay is put in and pushed out to make the sausages used in coil pots. By making a metal stencil of the outline of Robert Indiana’s ‘Love’ motif and attaching it to the machine, he also altered and redefined the outside edge of the clay passed through it.

Exhibited supported by Scottish Arts Council.  Publication supported by Hope Scott Trust and Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow.

Installation View


Installation View


Alex Frost, Robert Indiana, 2004


Alex Frost, Untitled (Ear and Coat), 2004


Alex Frost, Untitled (Karla), 2004


Alex Frost, Untitled (Lillies), 2004


Alex Frost, Untitled (Drawing Slides), 2004


Alex Frost, Untitled (Wall in studio), 2004


Alex Frost, Wall Sculpture, 2004


Alex Frost, Continuous Profile (White), 2004