Alex Tedlie-Stursberg (b.1980 UK) is known for his sculptures and installations, which utilize found objects and natural materials scavenged from the shoreline and urban landscape. His material approach is inherent to a West Coast counterculture vernacular, while also referencing the European aesthetic traditions of Dada, CoBrA, Nouveau Réalisme and Arte Povera. Stursberg’s bricolage sculptures, tableaus and assemblages incorporate materials such as stones, coins and bottle caps as a means to explore time, the value of materials and the ever-shifting meaning of objects. Degraded styrofoam, salvaged from tire flotsams washed ashore are transformed into gleaming bronze monuments to a modern existence marked by our debris. Bisected basalt or granite stones reveal glittering automotive paint, reflective of muscle cars and American guitars, associated with Southern California during the 1960s. Stursberg’s usage of detritus is subject to a material alchemy — from trash to brass, the mundane to the mythological, transforming our expectations of and relationship to discarded materials.
His work has been exhibited around the world; recent exhibitions include The Chan Family Collection Gallery, Vancouver, BC (2022), Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver, BC (2022), Utopos, with Keep in Touch Gallery, Seoul Korea (2021), and Sous la Plage, les Pavés with TRAPP Projects, Vancouver, BC (2021). In 2020 he was awarded a Digital Originals grant by the Canada Council for the Arts and presented Atmospheric Supply, an online exhibition of activated sculptures. In 2021, he unveiled Cosmic Boulders, a public artwork in Port Moody, BC, facilitated by Ballard Fine Art. In 2022 his first artist book was published by TRAPP Projects. Stursberg is currently employed as a Sessional Instructor with SFU Contemporary Arts. He is also involved in a variety of mutual-aid projects, the most recent of these being BIG TOP, which is a free pop-up art school for downtown eastside residents and marginalized artists.
Selected Works
