Interview
Alex Miln
Alex Miln was born in 1957 in Auckland. He lives at Papamoa Beach Bay of Plenty New Zealand. His passion for art was ignited from a very early age. He certainly did not know what his style was but he was interested in experimenting in every art medium he could. From 1972 to 1975, he attended Northland College, further expanding his desire to try every art medium. When he left school in 1975, he wanted to attend the Elam School of fine Arts, but his parents would not support this, so in 1976 he attended the Auckland Society of Arts Fine Arts Prelim program under the tutorship of Alistair Nisbet-Smith, one of New Zealand’s well known practicing artists. This proved to be a pivotal moment for Alex; he had a passion for sculpture and painting and saw them as two separate mediums until he didn’t. He combined both mediums and started developing his own style. Between 1977 to 1978, he carried on with the prelim program under the tutorship of John Perry, another well known New Zealand artist. Under his tutorship, Alex further developed the 3-Dimensional relief medium.
In 1983, Alex was a finalist in the Team McMillian Art Award and had his first solo exhibition at the “Last and First Café”. In that year, he also travelled to the UK and Europe, seeking ideas and taking lots to photos, particularly of signage and neon signage, of Cinzano, Campari and Martini. He wasn’t sure why, but they fascinated him. The first few signs that he did were a disaster, he just could not get it to work, but he just kept committed to his belief in this, until he could get it to work. Around 2005, he finally got a break through with it. It was finally working and he set about the next ten years building a body of work. His recent exhibitions include: “Supa Cuba Dupa” Group Exhibition Wellington (2020) and “Signs Fiction”, Soul Gallery, Hamilton (2023), among others. He was a finalist in the Molly Morepeth Canaday Art Award in 2021 and a finalist in the Miles Art Award in 2022.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“My passion in art was ignited from a very young age, almost pre-school really. My life in my spare time became consumed with painting, drawing, sculpting, making models, photography. I just wanted to try every medium I could. I didn't much know what my style was, I didn’t even know about style then, I just wanted to try every medium and I wanted to improve my skills. By the time I was 18, I still had not developed my own style but I had decided that it was a dead heat between the medium of sculpting and painting. I wanted to do both but I had assumed they were two separate disciplines until I decided that they weren't. I combined the two and this was the beginning of developing my own new style, but I had to wait another 10 years; experimenting and creating some pretty bad art work and enduring many failures. In 1983, I decided to travel to Asia, the UK and Europe.
While traveling around Europe, I consciously took photos of large neon signs on roof tops, not really understanding why. I just loved the signs shouting in burning neon; Cinzano, Campari and Martini. In 1984, I started work at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. I indulged in their extensive art libraries. I discovered an artist by the name of Robert Cottingham and his painting Roxy, and that changed my art experience. Those photos of Cinzano, Campari and Martini suddenly made sense; I wasn't going to copy Robert; I was going to three dimensionalise my signs, make them bigger, bolder, and dirtier. I spent the next two years photographing signs in Europe and the UK; driving them into sketches, water colours and plans. In 1985 I was seeking greater inspiration and I traveled to North America. I bought a Greyhound bus pass and started traveling through the mid west. It was one of the most grounding things that I have ever done. I always sat on the back seat of any Greyhound. Two reasons; I could smoke down at the back, and you would get to meet Americans you wouldn't normally meet, let alone strike up a conversation with.
At times I wondered if I was having conversations with the slightly clinically insane, but then there were times when I was simply humbled by people and their back stories. They never traveled very far, only from one town to the next, just enough money for the bus fare. I traveled with criminals who had just been released from prison to battered girlfriends and wives who were just trying to escape to the next town. The biggest observation for me was that this was Reagan's vision for his America, run down, poor and broken communities - a legacy of constant restructuring, moving manufacturing offshore to satisfy the consumer’s appetite for cheap goods. The obvious corporate legacy was empty shops and main streets, neon signs that were rusting and falling apart. They were telling their own unique story. I wanted to capture this story, to let it tell its own truth. I wanted to take the deceased sign design elements from the streets and put it into the gallery space; I call this practice Signtology.”
What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?
“My work questions prevailing and persistent conceptions around the myths that we create around our own world view; to confront the messaging; to look behind the curtains; to look under the rug; to see the shadows; to ingest the popular and the unpopular; the familiar and the unfamiliar - to confront the message when we just want to drive by.”
Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?
“I plan all work out with a preliminary sketch; drive that sketch into a finished sketch. A scaled plan is then developed and then drawn onto the plywood. While the scaled drawing may look right; I will make adjustments on the plywood if the scale or dimensions do not look right on the wood. From there, I will start applying the 11 to 13 coats of paint, sometimes imperfections or happy accidents occur in the work and I always allow them to remain. Imperfections are sometimes the road to perfection.”
Are there any art world trends you are following?
“None. When the art scene was rapidly changing in the mid seventies and eighties, I realized that hiring a helicopter and throwing a side of beef from a thousand feet; viewing the resulting impact and then packaging it up as art for the art consumer was not for me. My vision was different; I wanted to make three dimensional art and a different way of manipulating paint; I wanted to make paint worthy again; to give it back its street cred.”
What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?
“All my works are 3-dimensional billboards (around 100-180cm wide, 90-140cm tall and about 10cm deep), hand-constructed out of plywood and aluminum. Alloy tubes are used for neon lighting. After construction and priming, the painting process begins with base coats, layer over layer, between 11 to 13 coats with innovative textures – it is the manipulation of both paint and washes. This technique ensures a real depth in visual aura is achieved, adding to the illusionary nature of the works.”
“Imperfections are sometimes the road to perfection.”
What does your art mean to you?
“If I were to sum up what art means to me in one sentence, it would be this; great art excites my visual senses and moves my view of the world. I have always followed this mantra; great art needs to fulfill three key elements:
1. Have I developed my own unique style?
2. Is it technically competent and skillful?
3. Does it move the viewers view of the world?
When I achieve all of those core elements then I am achieving something close to great or at least good art; but it is not for me to decide whether those elements have been achieved or not. The viewer will decide that for every artist. I can only put it out there for judgment.”
What’s your favorite artwork and why?
“Edward Kienholz's 1968 piece "Portable War Memorial". The piece is set against the back drop of anxiety about the Vietnam War. The work questions the emergence of the defence economy, now intertwining with the consumer economy for the “greater good”; but the participants in the piece are carrying on as if it were just business as usual. Nothing to see here - and yet the trash can on legs sings God Bless America, a parody of the faceless Iwo Jima soldiers of World War II, who mount the victory flag (in this case, a tiny, faded American flag) into a cafe table as if this was something done every day, like putting up a sun umbrella. Meanwhile the couple next door consume coke and hot dogs, oblivious to events happening around them, just another benign day. And yet a quiet anxiety runs through the piece. Edward Kienholz is often linked to the genre of pop art, but I think he was his own genre. Pop art is a celebration of the benign, a celebration of the mundane; taking the mundane and the benign and turning it back into a celebrity. The Kienholz genre, is taking iconic Americana imagery, as if you want to kneel before it or salute it; and then reflecting it back to the viewer in all its ridiculousness; it's anger is asking the viewer, “Who, in this picture, is suffering moral turpitude?””
