Alex Macdougall
Alex is an artist, sculptor and musician based in Manchester/Salford. He creates wooden sculptures and assemblages using hardwoods such as oak and sycamore as core materials, manipulating shape, scale, texture, tone, and composition.
Alex is interested in the modern human experience – specifically, how interaction with the capitalist economy, technology, patriarchy – coerces our bodies, distorting our internal psychic spaces, our connection to one another, our collective past, and the natural world.
Alex’s mode of thinking is often informed by his studies in social psychology and depth psychology. His approach to making was shaped by a period as a furniture maker and designer – a time which instilled a knowledge of contemporary, traditional, and experimental woodworking techniques. Alex has felt increasingly drawn away from furniture making, and towards sculpture and visual art – as mediums that can relate to worlds beyond purely aesthetic and functional concerns.
As a musician, Alex is one quarter of experimental band Mandy, Indiana, who tour internationally and have released two albums to critical acclaim. The band have performed to audiences such as Coachella Festival, CA, and Primavera Festival, Barcelona, and a showcase at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, London in Dec 2024. For some time, Alex has been considering how to bring sound and performative elements into his studio practice. He is currently collaborating with two experimental poets on a sound/performance work, combining the mechanical noises of workshop machines and spoken word.
Alex has been a contributing studio member of Paradise Works since 2023.