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DRAY

Through a narrow alley hung with palm trees, and up the steel staircase, I entered Cell Project Space. This affordable studio and gallery complex in East London’s Cambridge Heath is committed to showing the work of emerging artists. Bearing that in mind, I was prepared to see the unseen – though not quite in the sense I did.

The gallery walls are peppered with black powder coated heaters and fans, boasting brilliant fuchsia plugs and neon orange cables. The appliances sound a strong visual statement and demand attention. The all-pervading hum of machinery anchors the viewer in the space. It is all about the detail here: a small red lightning recalls Ziggy Stardust and the glory days of glam, while the engraving of DRAY AND SONS upon LED lamp casing poses a question about the work’s authorship.

These beautiful devices were factory produced and then hacked and radically rewired by the artist. The interest in functionality is linked to Dray’s credo of empowerment through being able to provide things for oneself. This is why she has learnt to build computers – so that she can actively partake in the environment we now all inhabit. Even if it is not the kind of work I would consider making myself anytime soon, I cannot resist the allure of technological self-reliance.

How many of us would be able to design, assemble and programme a functioning heater? Increasingly, we are at loss against the ever-amassing wealth of technological know-how we will never be able to use to our advantage. I believe that there are very few people on this planet who know every component of the laptop I am writing this on. In the age of specialization, this may worry few. And yet, inability to comprehend the machinery that surrounds us opens the door to blind following and, eventually, exploitation. Far too often we take the technological framework for given. Successful products have become universal tools that orchestrate the whole of society.

The practical advantage of being able to build a device that controls temperature in a room is not to be overlooked. In wintertime, heaters to cling to are a viable alternative to double-glazed windows. In this case, artwork has a very direct effect on the space and its ambience. There is a mutual relationship between the work and the building, as appliances are orchestrated to turn on and off at specific times in response to the gallery’s power capacity. Reliance on the architectural specification of the space is a ploy to remove the artist from making a series of arbitrary decisions. It highlights the functionality of the work, while at the same time endowing the objects with their own agency.

The rhythm of device activation points to a whole side of the exhibition that remains invisible beyond the gallery walls: ring amps, spurs, timers and other imperceptible essentials. Walking through the space, the viewer may suddenly become aware of the glare of a newly switched on heater on their back; a feeling not unlike being watched. The red glow evokes flesh, and the curious adaptability of appliances relates them to bodies.

The show constitutes a rearrangement of power relations within the traditionally masculine manufacturing industry. In Dray’s own words, it is also a gesture of protest against the “quiet aggression and monotony of the standardisation process”. The artist opposes the processes of market domination that bypass the public. In the exhibition, the old device of the artist’s hand is used to guard the viewer against passivity and the trap of taking things for granted. Named after the artist herself, DRAY constructs a valid parallel between branding, machinery and selfhood.

#natalie dray #cell project space #art #sculpture #installation #conceptual art #cambridge heath