Regimented along the length of the main gallery like verses on a page, Gabriel Kuri’s amalgams of fabricated and found forms suggest that reading is a core requirement here. Facets of metal, concrete, resin embedded with cigarette butts, a condom, sheet metal and glass read like an inventory. In the absurd contingency of ‘Untitled (Extra Safe)’ an inflated condom pinched between smooth painted sheet metal and a segment of a battered yellow skip prompts the wry acknowledgement of something in the wrong place, of intimacy amid industry, softness beside hardness.
In ‘Untitled (Shelter)’, the syntax of standing, leaning and lying objects becomes more weirdly articulate by way of a wider but more confounding vocabulary. The combination of an over-sized cut-up credit card and giant burnt and unspent matches and a coat rack overladen with jackets can be read as sculptures individually, but also add up to something like an emergency encampment or makeshift shanty-style of housing, in turn suggesting notions of survival and security.
In the context of these identifiable objects, the series of brightly painted abstract metal forms in the courtyard assume the accent of commerce, perhaps logos made large for corporate ‘fun’ decoration, or even interaction. Moving on to the third gallery space, though, and precise political references finally come to the fore. Polling tables and booths become display structures laid out with arrays of nub-ends of soap bars, splintered old door wedges and bottles filled with water, operating as reminders of utilitarian making do as a political stance.