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Les Dorahy's installation has many components- some small pieces cantilevered from backing boards on the walls, some larger cantilevered wall pieces and a long narrow floor piece. A further two-dimensional series is exhibited in an adjoining room. Materials and processes he has used include inlaid timber, rusted, etched and sanded steel, cast bronze and gridded wooden structures. The minimalism of the small wall pieces is overpowered by the larger pieces whose presence as 'contraptions' seems to be emphasised by the titles (T.R.A.C., C.A.M.) which function like model coding systems. Entrance to the work via the biographical matrix of its author, or locus of intention is discouraged.
The installation's elements are fastidiously measured and repetitively executed in an apparently obsessive search for the basic building blocks of form. The objects become artisanal actions-breaking sculpture into its component parts, itemising the materials and techniques of construction with the precision of an engineer, but on a rather larger than Mechano scale. The adjoining two-dimensional works each juxtapose an organic and an hard-edged angular shape etched into metal, suggesting a point of transition between earlier 'hieroglyphical' works (where objects of nature or daily life were taken over as conventional signs for idea and given emblematic qualities which explored the natural order) and this modular geometric exploration through the rule-governed system of the symbolic order. A large cubed open grid heaves itself from its attachment to the wall; a large crane –like cantilevered arm intrudes into the space; another large structure occupies a central floor space. Conventionally, installation pieces make the walls and floor and ceiling part of the physical experience of the work. Here however, against the internal logic of the forms, the jostling