In the gallery space at Conical, with its grey rendered brick walls and old polished floorboards, there is a lifesize table, armchair, lamp, and section of wall. These objects are made of white telephone cable. They are not actually 'made'. Instead, their shapes are loosely 'drawn' in three dimensions, with copper wiring protruding from the end of each piece of cable, tying it to the neighbouring piece. These outlined lounge room furnishings are ghostlike shapes, full of empty space. Bolted to the floor and ceiling, they are positioned in a tableau that incorporates a disused fireplace in the brick wall of the gallery. To the side of the space is an alcove with the conventional white gallery walls. On one side a poster-sized colour photograph shows a view of overhead tramlines against a blue sky. On the adjacent wall another version of the same photograph can be seen, but this time in a larger, high contrast black and white print.

It's a quiet Sunday, a day when most galleries are closed. Conical is empty, and even the desk at the entrance is deserted. I walk around the space, looking at and through the objects, enjoying the illusion of being inside a living room. Unlike many installations that are simply large displays to be looked at, I can walk around inside this work. I cease to think of it as an 'installation' or a 'work of art'. It exists as a welcoming negative space, in which all the associations of the living room as an enclosure have been stripped away. Being here on my own I feel cosy, yet as empty and as light as the objects around me. I smile to myself, enjoying the absence of thought, and of the need to interpret or define.

Pam Clements' installation is a quietly humanistic work, able to engage the participant on a physical and emotional level. It is simple, without being simplistic. In the exhibition flyer, Clements writes that "I am interested in the structure of our lives and our memory." The memory of the gallery space as a converted living space is a key element in the presence of this work. The use of telephone cable is also an effective metaphor for the structures of human relationship that underpin our domestic environments. Yet as Clements notes, this cable represents an antiquated technology in the age of wireless communications, and an awareness of this gives the work an added sense of absence and loss.

The construction of everyday objects out of unusual readymade materials is a common technique in contemporary art. Meret Oppenheim's Fur Breakfast of 1936, is a famous precursor of this approach, presenting a cup and saucer lined with fur - an object combining domesticity and sexuality in an evocative and disturbing way. As in Oppenheim's work, this technique is frequently used to subvert our assumptions about everyday reality, and to explore meanings and relationships that might otherwise go unseen. Unfortunately, contemporary artists sometimes exploit this technique simply for the sake of effect, reducing a valuable conceptual approach to the level of a visual gimmick. Pam Clements' installation at Conical is an exception. It eloquently uses simple artistic means to present a thoughtful exploration of memory and place.

Jason Beale 2005

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