Sutton Gallery is pleased to present Dirt Season Lookbook, an exhibition of new work by Alex Vivian that furthers his investigation into the sculptural and metamorphic possibilities of domestic objects and urban street wear. Working with everyday items sourced from discount and second-hand outlets, Vivian performs transgressive acts of transmutation upon his chosen materials to produce curiously perverse forms. For Dirt Season Lookbook, his abject alterations are applied to hats, bowls, vessels and soft toys. Bleached, distressed with dirt, run over by the wheel of a car, ingrained with sweat stains or put through the wash with tissue, Vivian’s many modifications degrade his objects’ common function to the point of putrefaction.

With an understanding of small-scale sculpture and informed by an ongoing engagement with installation, Vivian explores a wide range of ideas relating to masculinity, fashion, design and youth cultures, as well as the interplay between function and failure. His sculpturally poetic works seamlessly mix high and low cultural references, staging minor insurrections between cultural signifiers, form and context. The human body remains a constant reference point throughout his practice, often inferred via bodily traces, imprints and gestures.

Alex Vivian studied at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 2005. He was a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, between 2010 and 2011.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Men’s Apparel, Distressed, Craft Victoria, Melbourne, 2012; A Face; falling beyond (Classic, plinth, socks), Studio 12, Gertrude Contemporary, 2011; Minnie the Moocher, (in collaboration with Kate Smith), Westspace’s The West Wing, Melbourne, 2011; Catcher/ tube socks. (Ewok, kyote, baby fred flinstone, scamp, Quix bunny in the rye.), Gambia Castle, Auckland, 2010; GL,420,nrrr,go-T,PPrS,ISO:—–> SP,troll,OTR,420’n,ngi,HWP,hav accom, Y3K, Melbourne, 2009; Stench in numbers, TCB art inc., Melbourne, 2009; and *tastes self*, (in collaboration with Kate Smith), Hell Gallery, Melbourne, 2009.

Selected group exhibitions include: Pretty Air and Useful Things, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2012; Pulp tongue, Sydney College of the Arts, 2011; State of Decay, Chapman & Bailey, Melbourne, 2011; One-Person Group Therapy, BWA Awangarda Gallery, Wroclaw, Poland, 2011; and The Second (Fourth) Melbourne Biennial of Art, TCB art inc., 2008.