Michael White – So Miami!! @ The Duchy Gallery

When is a lumpy plaster erection falsely elevated by a platform a challenge to the edifice of penis as phallic signifier, and when is it just another cock?

With one grungy form towering high and another knob fallen on the side, Michael White continues his exploration into a hierarchy of objecthood and the redundancy of the Monument. Taking influence from tribal iconography and primitive modes of expression, White excavates sculptural lineage, groping his way through forms and processes that seem to protrude from the surface of the plaster, then submerge once more.

The custom-built platform is an interesting element of this latest work, forcing the viewer to negotiate her pathway through the gallery and controlling the apprehension of the gestalt. Meanwhile, the aesthetics are murky and indistinct, less Miami and more Bognor Regis.

In mind of the blank smiley faces of some previous works, I search the head of the big one for some identity to know him by; his craggy features are suggestive of The BFG, perhaps. Otherwise, there appears no design sufficiently definitive or iconic to merit the flashing lights of the catwalk or fit the title Spring Collection.

There is no doubt that White’s prodding and probing continues, but it would be nice to know just which cock we’re looking at: exposing meaningful objects as pawns in an exercise in grandiosity inevitably effaces the specific in favour of the general, but no two monuments crumble in the same way. [Jac Mantle]