Alex Hetherington @ Embassy

There’s nothing new under the sun. This seems to be the underlying principle behind Alex Hetherington’s work. He describes his art not without first giving a lengthy preamble that draws on the output of several other artists. And when you pry deeper into his working process, attempting to unearth the very essence of his creativity, you find your path strewn with yet more references. His art is a vicarious art, drawing on others to exist.

Likewise, his solo show at Embassy looks to be a referential mash-up, conjuring the work of artists he has come to appreciate over the years.“I was listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor endlessly,” he explains in his slightly inflected tone, “I kept listening to their work and thought I really wanted to do something with it. I love the way they sample text, record voices. It’s effectively the same way I make work. But there was no way I could do something eligible with this so I thought to myself, what would someone else do with it?”

At the time he was looking at the work of German sculptor Isa Genzken whose artworks are a kind of post-Europop Pop Art, often incorporating found objects, such as mannequins and wheelchairs. “Her work couldn’t be more unlike mine,” he says. “So I decided to make work as though I were Isa Genzken listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor.”

Perhaps better known for his performance art, one can’t help but enquire about his sudden turn to sculpture. “All the work in the show implies some form of live interaction,” he corrects me, before going on to describe how he came to repeatedly throw an Apple laptop from a building.

In many ways the objects in his forthcoming show form part of a performance. From their inception they were the products of a masquerade, a pretence. They are what Isa Genzken would have made if she were listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor.

Above all experimental, Hetherington poses hypotheses. Art for him is not about definite answers, it's about endless connections, allusions. And although there is nothing new under the sun, the combinations are endless.