- Venue
- The Common Guild
- Location
- Scotland
Feeling slightly bad having abandoned some friends at SWG3, the taxi situation was scarce and as I experienced with Glasgow International, you have to time your PV-hopping just right. Having already heard Gabriel Kuri speak about his work, or more, some past and current ideas around his work on the Friday at Glasgow Film Theatre in his soothing Mexican monotone, the information has had time to gestate, resulting in problematic elements already arising. In what I describe in the aforementioned taxi over, we are in the Chelsea of Glasgow, a beautiful area, clearly affluent. The Common Guild is the last townhouse on one of the highest roads, providing a great view of the city.
Upon entry an invigilator opens the door and in the foyer are Untitled Quick Platform 01 + 02, (both 2014), situated awkwardly right in front of where all the visitors would want to be stepping to maneuver the space. This is an interesting decision, immediately confronting with emergency/ disaster related objects and donations from a callout that will be donated to the GLAD Action Network and the Unity Centre, Glasgow, which will be discussed later. The very idea of creating works using donated toiletries and objects is fraught with difficulty, if nothing else these pieces demonstrate Kuri’s interest in flux, and the possibility of sculpture in the form of a sketch: these pieces will not be re-created and to do so would be convoluted. They provide an opportunity for an encounter, relating his satisfying sculptural aesthetic with the forms donated – A self imposed exercise in fleeting sculpture making.
Untitled Floor Dividers, and Untitled Polling Table (both 2014), have a larger history to Kuri’s work, expanding on his Sadie Coles exhibition Classical Symmetry, Historical Data, Subjective Judgement, London (2012) These raw materials all with their own cultural content, their own degrees of possibility (for invention or event) meaning that these sculptures take on many ideas through their selection: Kuri says himself that he is more of a selector than an accumulator. It is this statement that demonstrates his set of ideals and relationship to objects as an idiosyncratic and personal one.
On the second floor, again objects donated with clear function are presented on these ‘emergency plinths’, the aluminium blanket, felt roll and palette are all aspects of functional semiotics. Although the intent is to “highlight the use, value and ownership of the objects”, it in fact highlights the attempt of an established, international artist to access a humanity that his work simply does not lend itself to. It is an interesting attempt, and the fact that the materials are being donated to those who need it is no doubt a good cause, but it feels so secondary in the work, yet mentioned so primarily in all press releases. Untitled Quick Platform 03, (2014) by its title demonstrates their circumstance as a part of the exhibition rather than a piece making a direct statement – it is activated through the act of donation, and knowing this is vital to the work.
In the main room of the second floor, the grey-brightness of the day pierces the arrival and refracts slightly off Balance of the invisible and the foreseeable (2014), powder coated metal circles, bent and formed into varying shapes, balanced with sleeping bags squeezed, pinched and pushed in between. In his ongoing discussions around hard facts and soft information this piece creates a great visual relationship, in terms of materiality. The hard facts: the angles that the metal is bent to, chemical equations of the powder coating and the visitor numbers this exhibition will receive; the soft information the value of help that this exhibition will offer, the amount the sculpture will move by millimetres throughout the show, the aspect of flux that these works are in and if Kuri would consider revising what is donated and how, if the system of objects is such an interest.
