Mark Alsweiler (b. 1983, Aotearoa New Zealand) is an artist based in Naarm/Melbourne.

His practice spans drawing, painting, and sculpture, characterised by the collection and repurposing of reference material sourced from everyday life. Often focusing on the ordinary and overlooked, his work reassembles aspects of the built environment together with the natural world. By exploring these intersections, he offers new perspectives on the spaces we inhabit, highlighting a beauty found in simplicity and function.

GALAXY FURNITURE

In the town I grew up in, there was a family restaurant called The Galaxy. Lots of kids had birthday parties there, and you could play in the spaceship control room that looked up to a fake galaxy of stars while you waited for your meals to arrive. In reality, it was probably pretty ordinary, but the memory remains of a magical place.

A lot of young people who grow up in a small town want to leave when they are older for the bright lights and the big city. Once you’re out there, however, it can lead to a feeling of confusion or limbo between what is considered your home and your hometown. The reality is, you can never truly return to that world, as what you knew it as isn’t there anymore — even though the architecture and streets may remain the same.

I think of the process of making artwork as collecting and repurposing. The collecting of reference material can be as mundane as a colour combination from a suburban fence, or as far-reaching as referencing a restaurant name from a childhood birthday party many years ago. I like the idea of blending memories with ordinary aspects of everyday life.

I often work from photographs I take while walking — mostly of shapes on walls and other architecture elements — and simplify them down into different forms through drawings and paper cut outs, then rearrange them.

These paperworks have a sense of freedom because they can be loose and are often fast to make. I often pair them together to create new compositions where you can see things from a new perspective. The pairings help form compositions for paintings, and I like that the initial spontaneous or intuitive energy in the drawings is then juxtaposed with a more controlled process within the paintings.

People often rearrange furniture as a way of externalising and managing an internal state. The work in this show feels like the result of organising and arranging in order to help gain a sense of internal clarity and space. Like letting go of things you no longer need, but also remembering what memories, places, and people are important to you.