Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size I’m in Newtown, in Sydney’s inner west, in a semi-industrial backstreet that snakes along a railway line.
The street bears the signs of gentrification: an old silo converted into swanky apartments; a former flour mill now a colony of commercial offices and studios; a cafe that bakes extravagantly large, rich, gourmet cookies that sell for $7.50 a pop. A little further along, huge slabs of marble are stacked in a garage driveway.
One might assume the place is a workshop for the production of upmarket kitchen benchtops. Look inside and it becomes clear that something else is going on. Scattered among assorted wooden crates are life-size replicas of everyday objects, carved in marble, among them a Monobloc chair, a puffer jacket, a short-drop toilet.
Alex Seton, contemporary artist and marble sculptor, emerges from the back of the workshop and greets me warmly. A voluble character with a striking plume of hair, he launches into an explanation about the space. “No carpets and couches,” he says.
“Everything around this studio is based on flexibility and ease ...
everything is moveable, it changes all the time, this is a morphing studio.” It needs to be. In this studio, Seton has made works ranging in size from a three-metre-high skull (including plinth) t.