 By the end of the day you're going to need us (1985) |
As mentioned earlier, we depend on the critics to guide us to a closer understanding of Alexander's work. She won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1995 and had an exhibition at the Grahamstown Festival as a result. Ivor Powell wrote the essay for the catalogue which accompanied the exhibition. Powell writes on Alexander's work: "It reflects and explores a sense of being. It presents, through the sustaining metaphor of the human figure and its transmutations, a relation of the individual to the society." |
Alexander's work is always related to the human figure as well as to the human scale. Because of this life-size aspect, her sculptures have a potent presence and a sense of drama. Often they are given animalistic characteristics and in a way she bestializes the human form. This draws our attention to the instinctual drives within humanity: the overpowering desire for power, the habits of violence, victimization and oppression which we cannot hide - despite all our progress. Her figures are often distorted and clearly not attempting to be beautiful - they are rather deliberately evoking a sense of the grotesque. There is an exciting relationship of forms that appeal to us. Violence is combined with sensuous forms.
A variety of materials are used: plaster, bone, horns, wood, wax and paint. Alexander's primary reference is the human anatomy. She has an extensive knowledge of this as she studied anatomy at one time. She combines the external with the internal anatomy. At first her work was limited to carcasses. The skeletal carcass was used as a transition to the human form. Animal bone, with its organic and aesthetic properties, was a direct link to anatomy.
Alexander frequently used the method whereby an object is copied firstly in clay. She then puts plaster around it and when this is dry, it is very carefully cracked open. The relief image on the inside is then used to produce a copy, but in a more durable material. Her sculptures are modeled from the human form, but she also casts straight from the human body. After the casting is completed, she manipulates the form by modeling it and creating many textural possibilities.
Alexander understands the silence of space and by placing a figure or figures in this space, she can create the feeling of alienation, aloneness and loneliness. Her figures seem to be alive and watching us, ready to move at any moment. This can only be conveyed through careful study of posture.
She works mainly in sculpture but also creates photomontages. Photomontages started with the Dadaists during the First World War. These works allow one to cut up and collage images together and then create a new 'photograph.' It is then impossible to see the collage. This technique enables her to place her sculptures in new environments that would otherwise be impossible, because of the size of the sculptures and because of the chosen environments.
Alexander's work as a whole is very powerful, very ambitious and very real. The issues she deals with are very human and this element is one of the reasons her work is so successful.
The works that Alexander is producing now are often less distorted than her earlier works. She also makes very small sculptures, usually wearing clothes. An example is the figure called "Beauty", whom often appears in photomontages.