Upcoming Exhibition

Yukari Kaihori and Alex Laurie have each made site-specific installations for reception, altering the qualities of the gallery space through light and sculptural interventions which are attuned to social and immaterial transitions.

The origins of artificial light have some of their earliest roots in religion and worship through the use of fire, lamps and candles to illuminate caves and temples. The spread of centrally-supplied electricity across the world with industrialisation has expanded the phenomena of artificial light into practically every corner of people’s lives. Laurie’s spidery lightworks are made of construction materials: plaster and aluminuim—substrates that are usually painted over in interior spaces, and auto bulbs and tinned copper wire. The wire acts as a conductor, channeling electricity and casting soft pools of light across the room. Its effect is subdued, and, unlike much artificial lighting encountered today, it produces illumination while admitting shadow.

Organic matter collected by Kaihori from the gallery’s surroundings have been incorporated into her installation. Leaves and petals, and bits of asphalt and stone have been combined with resin, wire and wood to make long, beaded curtains that demarcate sections of the gallery. Suspended ceramic bells and incense also mark points and thresholds. Things and objects handmade and found are fused together in these artworks. Kaihori is interested in the distinctions between what is seen as living and what is not—where life begins and ends, and how the lifetimes of objects themselves unfolds, where fortune takes them once they are thrown away or lost.

Kaihori and Laurie’s artworks share a focus on tactile, labour-intensive methods, working with materials that are intuitively sourced, then cast, carved, welded, shaped, fired and refined. They also share an openess to hidden senses of things, what might be deemed mystical or spiritual in nature to a place or object. Mysticism is an indefinite and opaque term, yet it has an old etymological root in induction, initiation and introduction; similar to being received into a place or state. For reception, Kaihori and Laurie discern and work with the subtle spatial qualities of the gallery. Its architectural features, but also the generative change and movement that fills and charges its environment.