Anton Alvarez
Alphabet Aerobics
19 Mar – 5 Jun 2016
Main Gallery
Swedish-Chilean artist, Anton Alvarez has transformed our Main Gallery into a working ceramics factory for his latest exhibition.
Following his Masters at the Royal College of Art, London, Alvarez dedicated three years to one project The Thread Wrapping Machine but in 2015 he embarked on a new ceramics project. Alvarez has embraced the challenge of designing an autonomous manufacturing system that goes one step further than The Thread Wrapping Machine by removing the artist from the making process entirely; liberating him and questioning the role of maker, artist and curator.
The exhibition provides visitors with a unique opportunity to witness ground-breaking innovations in craft and design. Pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a sculptor; Alvarez’s machine will make sculptures daily in the gallery.
Alphabet Aerobics, at Sleaford’s National Centre for Craft & Design sees the gallery transformed into a working factory, with Alvarez’s new extruding machine. The show begins with a series of empty plinths, the machine producing a sculpture a day for the exhibition’s run”
Curator Bryony Windsor says “We’ve not had anything like this before. Alvarez is a furniture designer who’s worked a lot with thread. He burst on to the scene with his thread wrapping machine, and he’s now invented a completely different tool. The project is a hybrid between design, industry, art and installation- for me it’s so exciting
Crafts Magazine
About the Artist
Swedish-Chilean Anton Alvarez is a 2012 graduate of the Royal College of Art. Alvarez originally studied fine art and cabinetmaking before completing an Interior Architecture and Furniture Design course at Konstfack, the University College of Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm. Alvarez’s work focuses on the creation of systems, tools and processes for producing objects.
Alvarez work has been exhibited internationally, including at MUDAC in Lausanne, the Design Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Resent solo exhibitions at Gallery Libby Sellers in London and Salon 94 in New York.
