Alastair Gordon is a London based artist and lecturer. Works feature in various public, corporate and private collections including the Simmons and Simmons Collection and Beth de Woody Collection. Recent solo exhibitions at the Ahmanson Gallery, Los Angeles and First Things Gallery, New York. He was awarded the inaugural Shoosmiths painting prize in 2014 and has been shortlisted for various other awards including the Dentons Art Prize and Jacksons Painting Prize this year.
Central to Alastair's practice is the notion of a painting as a cultural artefact. At first these are paintings about paintings: images that oscillate between artefact and artifice. Certain questions emerge about the replication of the image, craft of the artist and certainty of the viewer. Notions of authenticity lie at the heart of Gordon’s artistic enquiry. He finds himself looking for evidence of the real thing. Artists’ materials such as masking tape and paper are rendered in paint to appear as taped or pinned on a wooden surface, a practice that refers to a specific form of illusionism that proliferated in XVII century Northern Europe called quodlibet (Latin “what you will”). As Jean Baudrillard wrote in The System of Objects: “We are fascinated by what has been created…because the moment of creation cannot be reproduced.”
Alastair debuted his work with the Cynthia Corbett Gallery at London Art Fair in January 2020 – and Scope NY March 2020 to great critical and collector response.
Alastair is course leader for Professional Practice at the Leith School of Art, Edinburgh where he also coordinates their graduate residency programme. He was recently artist in residence for the City and Guilds of London Art School. He draws every day and works out of his South London studio where he is currently working on new paintings.