Created: Jul 12, 2022 07:45 AM
Alex Allardyce included Block 3an acrylic monoprint on board, on display today as part of the 2022 Bermuda Biennial (Photograph supplied)
In 2020, Alex Allardyce spent a lot of time in his studio staring at concrete blocks.
The shadows, the lights and the “funny little abstract shapes” he saw inspired him.
“I just thought,‘ Oh there’s something there. Let’s do some research and work on it and see what I can do from that idea. ‘ It’s pretty inspiring a lot of things, ”Mr Allardyce said.
Block 3an acrylic monoprint on board, is now on display as part of the 2022 Bermuda Biennial, A New Vocabulary: Past. Present. tomorrow.
Mr Allardyce was one of 32 visual artists chosen to showcase their work along with 11 poets this year. More than 100 submissions were received and judged by Claire Gilman, chief curator of The Drawing Center in New York, Alexandria Smith, head of painting at the Royal College of Art in London, and Richard Georges, the British Virgin Islands winning poet.
“It’s quite an achievement really,” he said. “To be chosen by international judges, you think, ‘OK, there’s someone else who wants to.'”
Although architecture attracted him as a career, Mr. Allardyce was always interested in art. While studying at Edinburgh College of Art and Glasgow School of Art in his native Scotland, he was thrilled to see so many art classes open to him.
“It’s a very free, liberal course so if you’re studying architecture, you can easily go to the art studio and do some stuff there as well,” he said. “I took advantage of every opportunity.
“Art is something that is always there, something that I always do for relaxation and enjoyment and overall enjoyment of life. It’s one of my favorites to do. It’s just a major part of me – being creative and having to work. things.
“Block” drying linocuts in Alex Allardyce’s studio (Photo provided)
She moved to the island and married her Bermudian partner, Brenton Tucker, in 2017. She no longer practices architecture, giving more time for her artwork.
“I’m here now with a studio in the basement with a printing press there – so that’s all I need,” said Mr Allardyce, a mixed -media artist known for his painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture.
Since moving to the island he has also exhibited his acrylic paint on canvas and linocut prints at the Charman Prize at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art as well as various exhibits at the Bermuda Society of the Arts.
“Trapped in the garden studio during the lockdown, I started to look more intensely at my immediate surroundings. The movable sunlight on the decorative concrete blocks and the abstract shadows they cast on the floor caught me my eye, “read his artist statement. “Like a huge sundial, they marked the passing of the day, almost indistinguishable from the day before and the day to come. Because access to the rest of the world was restricted and there was only a partial view of what was happening around us, decorative concrete blocks became a metaphor for the isolation of Bermuda during the lockdown.
Before the pandemic hit, Mr Allardyce was making an exhibit he planned to show in Scotland.
“I started a series of Scottish paintings but then Covid happened so it closed really fast so I have some Scottish paintings that are homeless now,” he said.
He was born in Greenock, “an industrial town west of Glasgow”.
“It’s seeing better days,” Mr Allardyce said. “It used to be sugar refining and ship building – not now. It has a high unemployment problem.
“I left there to go to university in Edinburgh, Glasgow and then moved to London 20 years ago.”
Although he has always been interested in the Bermuda Biennial, this is his first time attending.
“I will only receive eligibility [at the time of the 2020 Biennial]. I’m not quite ready to do such a thing. I was just kind of setting up the studio at the time and so I was thinking ‘Oh, that’s great. Let’s leave that to the next one. ‘”
He was happy with the work he did.
“The actual piece itself lasted about a week but behind it was a two month thought process, a sketching process and an experimental process just before that.
“I think it’s so beautiful in the room.”
The 2022 Bermuda Biennial, A New Vocabulary: Past. Present. tomorrow. will be on display at the Bermuda National Gallery until Dec. 30. For more information visit: www.alexallardyceart.com; www.bng, bm
