Alex Asch, Speed change, 2024, recycled road sign, painted steel, form-ply and concrete residue, 77 x 162 cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie
Alex Asch and Mariana del Castillo are two significant visual artists working in the Canberra region. Both have established national reputations. Tilt is their most ambitious and successful exhibition to date, interrogating the natural and manufactured environments.
Both artists are émigrés from the Americas. Asch was born in Boston in 1965, and del Castillo in Ecuador a year later. Both have lived in the Canberra area, mainly in Queanbeyan, for about 40 years. Their art explores the environment – the surrounding landscape – but not in a literal way. Instead, they transcribe the scenes in front of their eyes in the manner of traditional landscape painters.
Alex Asch, Taking the lot, 2024, recycled road sign, painted steel, form-ply, concrete residue and enamel paint, dimensions variable. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
The Cuban-born, Italian writer, Italo Calvino once noted: “Think what it would be to have a work conceived from outside self, a work that would let us escape the limited perspective of the individual ego, not only to enter into selves like our own but to give speech to that which has no language, to the bird perching on the edge of the gutter, to the tree in spring and the tree in fall, to stone, to cement, to plastic …”
Asch plays with this idea of employing elements found in the landscape as a means through which the landscape can create a ‘self-portrait’ of itself. Unlike the artists of the 1960s who turned to found feathers, leaves, twigs and shells to create environmental statements concerning lost habitats, Asch turns to form-ply, galvanised steel, abandoned road signs and dumped concrete blocks for his materials through which to evoke our rural and urban environment.
Alex Asch, Monument to Brutalism 1, 2025, recycled galvanised trays, 40 x 69 x 20 cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
His pieces, including Speed change (recycled road sign, painted steel, form-ply and concrete residue), Taking the lot installation and Monument to Brutalism 1, are profoundly evocative works that ring true to our experience of our environment. The philosophy is that most of these materials have spent decades in the bush, rural rubbish tips or vacant lots and now carry the scars of summer heat, bushfires and flooding rains and somehow, the artist has been able to tap into them and to assemble them in such a way that we as viewers will feel a sense of authenticity about these landscapes.
Without transcribing external appearances or attempting a photographic likeness, Asch’s beautifully evocative landscapes, seen as individual panels or as installations, evoke the sensation of being out in the Australian environment and contemplating both its natural and manufactured forms.
Mariana del Castillo, Trespass, 2025, monoprint, recycled linen on marine ply, hand stitched with wool, dyed sumi linen, clay paint, 62 x 117 x 7 cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
Mariana del Castillo is an artist of a very different temperament.
If Asch is more concerned with external appearances, del Castillo is preoccupied with a finely nuanced, intuitive and emotional feel for the place. Although she also employs found materials in her art, they are generally more heavily worked and integrated into her own concepts and ideas of design. Pieces including Trespass (monoprint, recycled linen on marine ply, hand stitched with wool, dyed sumi linen and clay paint) and Deluge series (monoprint, recycled linen on marine ply, hand stitched with wool, charcoal, acrylic paint and sumi ink) are beautifully immersive works that involve you into a realm of mystery and mysticism.
Some of her clinical pieces, including Triage 1 and Triage 2, incorporate discarded hospital equipment, such as trolleys and partitions and convey a somewhat distressing atmosphere. Much in the world she evokes seems out of sync, and through her art, she tries to make it whole again.
Mariana del Castillo, Deluge series, 2024-25, monoprint, recycled linen on marine ply, hand stitched with wool, charcoal, acrylic paint, sumi ink, 96 x 16.1 x 7 cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.
Tilt is an unusual exhibition—beautiful, provocative and slightly disturbing. The two artists create their own reality from unlikely materials, and it seems distantly familiar. They are holding up a mirror to nature, which appears to be telling us that the old ways are no longer viable and that things need to change if we wish to continue to live in this environment.
Mariana del Castillo, Triage 1, 2024, reclaimed hospital partition. Stainless steel cabinet, sewing machine, timber, woollen blanket, dry chilli, aluminium, 164 x 180cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie
Alex Asch and Mariana del Castillo, Tilt, is at Pivot Gallery, Belconnen Arts Centre, 118 Emu Bank, Belconnen, until 23 March 2025, Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 am to 4 pm.
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