Kieren Reed's multifaceted practice encompassing sculpture, performance and installation explores the conceptual space between form and functionality, between the mass-produced and the artist's inimitable skill of making. His sculptural installations are rigorously researched and conceptually linked to a specific site, space or situation
Kieren Reed’s multifaceted practice encompassing sculpture,
performance and installation explores the conceptual space between
form and functionality, between the mass-produced and the artist’s
inimitable skill of making. Using traditional architectural
construction techniques - often incorporating natural materials
alongside found objects and readymades - Reed meticulously recreates
large-scale, commonplace functional structures (such as a tourist
information kiosk, a 1960s recording booth or an Irish seafaring boat)
and then re-positions them out in the world as sites for engagement
and discourse. As Reed explains, “Artworks for me need both to act in
real terms as well as simultaneously functioning aesthetically as
sculpture. This duality ensures it never becomes a static work, it is
always part of a negotiation - both functional and purely aesthetic.”
Every one of Reed’s sculptural installations are rigorously researched
and conceptually linked to a specific site, space or situation. Within
the frame of the Ritter/Zamet gallery space, he has seamlessly
constructed from scratch a life-sized, fully functioning cabin
intended to reference a library, reading room or workspace. Within the
perfectly rendered, plated-aluminium exterior, the interior space is
laid out as Reed’s personal resource of research and inspirational
material, displaying a carefully considered collection of objects,
books, artworks and other related ephemera across the furniture and
shelving.
It is Reed’s intention to speak to the basic human desire to make or
find a personal space, refuge or sanctuary as well as the artists’
specific need to find and occupy a studio – a place where one can go
to research, collect, explore and display ideas. By sharing this
creative, generative process with the audience, Reed allows us a
portrait of the artist at that given moment, a rare insight into how
the idea is translated into the material.
An important part of this sculptural installation is that the internal
space is inherently small, yet everything needed is perfectly
contained. The space itself is ‘activated’ through the relationship of
the space inside and the potential audience outside – it becomes a
site for exchange, the transfer of information and the initiation of
discussion – the ultimate synthesis between the physical and
discursive dimensions of sculpture.
Over the last several years, Kieren Reed has been invited to present a
series of exhibitions, projects, commissions and performances in the
UK at venues including Cubitt, London, Tate Britain, Gasworks, London
and the Chisenhale Gallery, London. In 2006 the project KADN Kiosk was
shown at Camden Arts Centre and at the New Art Gallery, Walsall in
2008. In 2008 he presented his continuing architectural
‘Interventions’ series at IKON gallery, Birmingham and was
commissioned to create an information pavilion piece at the Whitstable
Biennial in 2010.
Opening reception: wednesday 6 april 6-8 pm
RITTER/ZAMET
Unit 8, 80a Ashfield Street - London
hours: Wednesday – Saturday 12-6 pm
free admission