Group Show

The objects presented bring to mind three distinctive artistic and/or artisanal traditions: cabinetry, metalwork, and readymade sculpture. Despite their functional differences, they are all forms occupied by the problem of material transformation through techne. This common feature, which is undoubtably tied to the history of craft and its complex relationship to art, is the starting point from which Froud, Reilly and Yamakawa each explore the formal and conceptual possibilities of their respective crafts. Mounted to the gallery wall, Froud’s modular shelving unit has been designed and manufactured using a combination of manual artisanship and industrial production. The wooden cabinets are handmade by the artist; the aluminium components are outsourced to commercial fabricators. A small cubic pin locks each shelf into place, fastening the industrial metal shelves to the wooden framework. This joinery system, a reminder of the aesthetic potential of structural utility, literally connects two oppositional modes of production into a single, unified design. The wall pieces that accompany Froud’s cabinet are created by Reilly using molten tin alloy that is cast into loosely rectangular forms. As the metal cools, butterflies are encased into its hardening surface, producing a decorative sunken relief laced with fragments of organic matter left behind from the casting procedure. Her glassware is enclosed in a thin layer of metal, which has been spun on a pottery wheel. Hand-pressed flowers are set into the tin and framed behind glass plates, halting the organic process of decomposition. Yamakawa’s steel sculptures are made using staple pins, which she manipulates by hand into geometric forms. Mass-produced office stationery is treated like precious metal. The individual pins—commonly used to bind documents, secure packaging, or, in the artist’s case, to stretch canvas—are fused together in sets to create meticulous tectonic arrangements. By relinquishing the staple pin of its quotidian usage, Yamakawa reassigns the object a new aesthetic value that paradoxically remains indexed by its original (albeit mutated), prefabricated form.