Giles Alexander

Fossil

12 May — 31 May 2016

Born 1975, UK
Lives and works in Sydney

View profile

Open Road

The ghosts of defunct technologies surround us. Empty shop fronts that were once bookshops and video stores, the niches built to house pay phones in railway stations and the piles of old television sets that line suburban streets like the shells of an extinct species of turtle, all remind us of the slipping away of one technology as it is replaced by something better, newer, faster. 

Giles Alexander’s latest suite of paintings are timely reminders of another technology in transition – the motorcar. Since the early 20th century the car and the industries that build, distribute and support them have spread into in an inconceivably vast global network, a web connected by roads both visible and invisible.  Alexander’s intricate, realist paintings depict an ancestry of technologies that drive upon them, from the steam cars of the late 19th century and Model Ts of the early 20th, through the mid-century sports cars and family sedans, to military vehicles and super cars of the present era.

All are shown atop a plinth as venerated objects and seen against a neutral background. Alexander’s reference here is to the great equestrian painter of the late 18th century George Stubbs and his acolytes including Alfred Munnings – artists who dutifully produced pictures of their patron’s horses, usually depicted in idealised English countryside or, in the case of one of the finest examples of an atypical work by a famous artist, Stubbs’s Whistlejacket [1762], a life-size painting of a horse commissioned by the Marquess of Rockingham that was painted against a neutral background.

The visual language of depicting cars in TV ads and in magazine spreads draws its iconography in part from such paintings – cars are often depicted against black or white backgrounds and like Stubbs’s painting, the eye has nothing to look at but the fine detail of the object itself. One can draw a parallel to the money in the connections between the passions of rich men past and present, but Alexander also creates a dynamic sense of space between the objects and the canvases upon which they are painted. In the small works Alexander encapsulates the images in a glaze that’s like the sheen of an exquisitely polished duco, but in the twin large paintings the background is not paint but raw canvas. In both approaches it feels as if the cars are objects that compress time and place and hold, as if in aspic, the curious cultural histories and associations contained within them.

As a boy Alexander’s father gave him a model car every year for his birthday – a tradition the artist is carrying on with his own son – and before he settled on being an artist he had pursued his passion by enrolling in a degree in automotive engineering and design. Eventually abandoning the degree but never losing his interest in cars, Alexander invests these works with a curious mix of nostalgia and a clear-eyed critique.

The cars in these paintings are celebrations of design and optimised function, and are desirable objects in their own right, but in their state of veneration they have been what Alexander calls ‘debilitated’ – all are missing wheels or have been clamped, some are skeletons without engines, others are rusted through while still others sit inert awaiting recharging. In one picture a perfectly preserved Mercedes sports car is about to be mangled by a scarp yard claw.  This balance between states of utilitarian usefulness and dead objecthood haunt the images.

Nostalgia is sometimes defined as a kind of time sickness, a debilitating fascination with objects and things, very often from an early stage of our own lives, but just as often for some imagined past. Cars exist in the present in a way that defies such logic – where all other consumer technologies seem to have passed away prized examples of automotive engineering can still be seen driving the streets. They are a reminder that cars are essentially the same technology they were a hundred years ago, which is to say, no matter what kind of engine drives them, and no matter what exotic alloy their chassis might be made from, their status in Western society remains undiminished. We expect and demand both their convenience and the empowerment of personal mobility they give us.

Alexander’s paintings ruefully remind us that this nostalgia is literally making us sick – the contribution of their manufacture and distribution and their daily use is a major component of global carbon pollution. And yet these beautiful painted objects are symbolic of our attachment to an entire system that is sending the land beneath the waves, but ironically, may yet save us.  

Dr. Andrew Frost
April, 2016

Dr. Andrew Frost is a researcher in science fiction, cinema and contemporary art, the art critic for Guardian Australia and a lecturer in the Dept. Media, Music, Communications and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney

 View Channel 9 News footage about Giles Alexander painting a life size portrait of a Rolls Royce Phantom

\ Exhibition featured works

Giles Alexander

2CV Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 25x20cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

356 Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 20x24cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

356 Speedster Fossil

2016 \ Oil on raw linen \ 132x244cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

625 Spider Fossil

2016 \ Oil on raw linen \ 170x300cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

A6G Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 20x25cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Aventador Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 30x24cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Blower Bentley Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 30x24cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Chevy Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 20x25cm

Giles Alexander

D-type Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 20x25cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

DB4 Zagarto Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Defender Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 20x25cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

FJ Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 25x20cm

Giles Alexander

Indianapolis Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

LP400 Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 30x24cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Mini Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 25x20cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Miura Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

Giles Alexander

Monaro Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Napier Railton Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Steam Car Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 30x24cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Stingray Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Studebaker Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Talbot Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 20x25cm

Giles Alexander

Type 35 Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

Wall Hang of Selected Fossil Works

Giles Alexander

Woody Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 25x20cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

\ Chrysler Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 24x30cm

Giles Alexander

\ Giles Alexander holding D-Type Fossil

Giles Alexander

\ Gullwing Fossil

2016 \ Oil and resin on board \ 30x24cm

SOLD

Giles Alexander

\ Install photo

Giles Alexander

\ Install photo

Giles Alexander

\ Install photo

\ Other exhibitions

Hubert Pareroultja

"When the rain tumbles down in july"

21 March — 6 April 2024

PEOPLE,

Group Exhibition

29 February — 16 March 2024

Jonathan Dalton

MELBOURNE ART FAIR

22 February — 25 February 2024

Contact Us

to find out more about Fossil.

12 - 14 Meagher Street Chippendale, NSW 2008
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday, 9.00am - 5.30pm Saturday, 11am - 4pm Closed Public Holidays (and Easter Saturday)