Julian Laverdiere

By dimming the lights in the gallery to a funereal glow, employing the martial rhythms of Wolfgang Voigt's Wagnerian dirges, and setting his objects in vacuum-sealed tubes atop cold, grey sarcophagi, Julian LaVerdiere sought to eulogise what linear time, interface culture, and the Nasdaq celebrate in the long now as an embryonic seed. That is: the march of history and hysterical faith in information and hyper-connectivity to deliver us from the normalising effect that was always technology's 'progressive' intent. LaVerdiere's objects are sleeping pieces of history, but it is a fitful, narcoleptic sleep, constantly waking to inertia.

Using historical models that are flash points in the annals of 20th century progress, LaVerdiere creates a constellation of free-floating forms lodged in an ever ascending, ever accelerating spiral of signal densities. A rocket, a ship, or a simple bed are orphaned artefacts, rather than anxious, static objects wrapped in the precious, vertiginous consciousness of the artist. We don't so much recoup LaVerdiere's miniature objects through any sort of cathartic drama, but stand back and admire them from afar, content to bask in their spectral charms.