Michael E. Smith’s artistic practice is concerned with removing the layers of mediation attributed to mundane, everyday objects, stripping them down to their most basic, veridical form. Using a combination of natural and manmade materials to construct his sculptures, Smith casts the exhibition site as a foil for his minimal sculptures, mirroring the vacuity of the negative gallery space in the quotidian objects. But the sculptures do not represent empty gestures, free from connotation. They demonstrate how, even as stripped back as they are, their form is always tied to their function, and their mere presence carries traces from the outside world, piercing the incubatory, sterilised exhibition space.
Written by Goldsmiths CCA ...
