Terrence Smith

If Terrence Smith's artworks were people, they'd be the brooding, withheld sort, who prefer night's difficult hours to the generosity of sunshine. Solitary, nocturnal, in most cases very tall, they would resist being looked at - perfectly unsuitable specimens for submission to the kind of public scrutiny that goes on at an exhibition, in other words. And though Terrence's objects themselves usually possess a material confidence, with their executive glass-and-metal lustre, they refuse to communicate anything resembling feelings in an extreme or direct way, whether of longing or tenderness or loss. Instead, their beef is one with status-quo representation: How a real thing might be depicted, why. It's not a belligerent, two-fisted confrontation, though. More like a quiet objection, which insists the black of an abyss is not a void - empty, infinite - but one hundred per cent information, total noise running right the way to the edge of the frame, where work meets world.

- Oliver Shamlou