Alexandra Bircken

Alexandra Bircken’s unmonumental stretcher frame sculptures are informed by her background in fashion design and interest in the radical aspects of handmade culture. A fragmentary array of irregular objects and organic shapes, often coloured by the artist, is hung and displayed on strings and aluminium rods.

Embedded and held aloft as if on a weaver’s loom, lowly materials such as found tree trunks, slices of Styrofoam, building offcuts and thin cloth swatches (seen in Unit 1, Unit 3 and Unit 4, all 2008) are reincarnated as a new kind of artwork, twisting traditional painting and sculpture into icons of vernacular art and craft.

The detritus, wool, reedy trunks and rags that find their way into Bircken’s grids are reminiscent of the temporary architectures and all-incorporating make-do of alternative communities on the margins of mainstream society. The weaving and crafting involved in her method additionally brings to mind 1960s and ’70s feminist art politics.

When shown together, her works can appear as a radical lifestyle Gesamtkunstwerk. ‘I am interested in dismantling prevailing hierarchies of value regarding these objects and materials by way of connecting them, thus putting them in a new context to each other. It's an alternative system or cycle.’