Someone died trying to have a life like mine

Alex Seton
Australia
6 April 1977

Someone died trying to have a life like mine
2013
Wombeyan marble, nylon webbing

Place made: Sydney
Medium: Wombeyan marble, nylon webbing
Credit line: Gift of John and Jane Ayers, Candy Bennett, Jim and Helen Carreker, Chris and Elma Christopher, Cherise Conrick, Colin and Robyn Cowan, James Darling AM and Lesley Forwood, Scott and Zoë Elvish, Rick and Jan Frolich, Peter and Kathryn Fuller, Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett, Dr Michael Hayes and Janet Hayes, Klein Family Foundation, Ian Little and Jane Yuile, Dr Peter McEvoy, David and Pam McKee, Hugo and Brooke Michell, Jane Michell, Peter and Jane Newland, John Phillips, Dr Dick Quan, Paul and Thelma Taliangis, Sue Tweddell, Tracey and Michael Whiting, GP Securities, UBS and anonymous donors through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors Director's Project 2014
Accession number: 20142S5(1-28)
Signature and date: Signed and dated on the base of each sculpture.
Media category: Sculpture
Collection area: Australian sculptures
Image credit: Photos: Mark Pokorny

A Sydney-based artist, Alex Seton continues the tradition of the great Italian Renaissance sculptors such as Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, transforming hard and unyielding stone into soft drapery and nuanced form. Where the Renaissance masters sought to evoke the solemnity of classical antiquity, Seton has turned his attention to important contemporary socio-political issues.

This evocative installation, comprised of twenty-eight carved marble lifejackets, retells the story of the jackets washed up on Cocos Island off the coast of Western Australia in 2013, which are thought to have belonged to asylum-seekers whose lives were lost while searching for safety in Australia. While we will never know the identities of the people who owned the jackets and what they were fleeing, Seton’s marble sculptures ensure they will not be forgotten, with the work becoming an enduring memorial for the fragility of life and the tragedy of this instance in Australia’s long and complicated history of refugee and asylum-seeker policy.

Tansy Curtin, Curator, International Art pre-1980