Curator's tour of Michael E. Smith

About the exhibition

Using found objects, Michael E. Smith (born 1977, Detroit) uses materials that are drawn from the global workflow of production-consumption-depletion. They are things that are thoroughly used, discarded, but won’t disappear. They are recognisable in their raw states, and remain so once absorbed into finished sculptures.

Smith researches his chosen materials extensively, considering their histories alongside their physical properties: the perfect sphere of a basketball, for example, the hands that have touched it and the relationships between those who have caught it.

Smith pares back his galleries to an extreme, often uncomfortably so. Emptiness has its place in art history, which Smith continues while asking what it means today. His attention brings an overarching human metaphor and a present, although never overwhelming, conversation with the fundamentals of life, relationships, death and decay.