PHOTO PROJECTS ︎ FILM & VIDEO ︎ AUDIO ︎ SHOP ︎ INFO


Regretfully, Alexander Moyle, 2019  ︎Images  ︎Text  ︎Book




This book is about Alex, my friend and mentor.

More specifically, it’s about his public art commision To the River, and what it took to complete it. It’s also about invisible obstacles, the love of bronze, and a devastating fire.

To the River is on permanent display at Old Mill Drive and Bloor Street West in Toronto. It consists of five bronze sculptures, including three figurative forms: Repose, Navigator and Turbulence. It was assembled from over 200 sand-cast bronze plates and weighs over six tons collectively. It took three years to complete.

This book, Regretfully, Alexander Moyle, took almost as long to complete, and weighs barely 300 grams. It was made with help from Emma Fedderson, Candida Paltiel and Leila Courey. It was printed in Toronto in 2019 as an edition of 100.

⏤ Vuk Dragojevic
“It took three years to finish five bronzes for public display.  Each bronze had its surface caressed with the bastard, the name of a large flat file used to abrade the welds, followed up with angle grinders.  Keeping the form as one continuous surface is paramount in bronze assembly.  More than 50 sand cast plates comprise a single bronze sculpture.  Each sculpture is lifted, turned and rolled to have access to all surfaces of the form, eventually making the sculpture appear seamless.  

The effort is long.

As for hurdles, my body restrains me.  Stiff shoulders, aching feet, and blurry vision remind me that the tool I rely on, the body, has its limits, and will not always serve me.

During the project I enjoyed watching my assistants use their bodies in creating sculpture.  I enjoyed watching their movements evolve, from tapping a phone and sipping coffee, to dancing the length of a thirty foot bronze. Their dance had to be sustained for days, weeks and months.  They were my visual athletes, very skilled artisans who had wonderful powers of observation and trained their bodies to generate form. I am forever in their debt, for I needed a dozen sculptors, not one sculptor, to complete To The River, my last bronze project.“

⏤ Alexander Moyle