ARTFILE

Plato asserts that for the poet or artist, techne is a way and means to sublimate and contain mania, or 'madness'. Techne though is by its very nature mechanical and often repetitive, a skillset that can be honed and relied upon, but which can never reproduce or replace the blinding power of mania or ecstatic creativity. So philosophical rationalism finds itself wrapped up in a dialectical struggle with poetic frenzy, with disorder, and at bottom the terrible knowledge which mania can expose: the arbitrariness of the sign, the contingency of meaning, and in Heidegger's words the 'protection of the night of madness' as undergone for example by the German poet Friedrich Holderlin.

Most of the eight artists taking part in the group show 'Kaleid' at No More Grey Project Space lean towards techne in their pursuit of formal excellence, with the renegade disruptive influence of individual mania kept largely under wraps here. Perhaps this the inevitable consequence of being embedded in an institutional structure, as they are all currently artists-in-residence at Middlesex University.

During informal discussions with two of the protagonists in 'Kaleid', it emerged that their placement on campus had failed to generate any sort of collective identity, and that one positive spin-off from organising all aspects of the show themselves had been to kickstart a dialogue amongst the eight practitioners; the making of on the spot 'curatorial' decisions being one of its key drivers.

Gaea Todd's works in 'Kaleid' showcase her refined material vocabulary. Inseparable Distance, two stout batons of walnut fitted with glass veins containing red wine, that resembles a fibre-optic lamp or xmas tree, marks off the main project space from a small cubby-hole in which her piece Gravity & Grace (2009) awaits. The irony soon comes into focus in front of a modified stool and chair that suggest much more vulgar preoccupations. Molten glass has been dripped through holes in this wooden furniture, evoking incontinence, punishment and shame. They become a ducking stool and a dunce's seat. An interest in transparency characterises Katharine Dowson's work too, several chunky blocks made from acrylic and optical lenses sitting pretty in the heart of the room, refract the viewers gaze and create prismatic marks. Micro Macro (2009) according to the notes is 'a section of space photographed by the Hubble telescope of distant galaxies'. Victoria Browne continues this cosmological thread in her graphic treatise Stringskips (2009) which here comes in two versions, a copper-plate engraving that turns up again on micro-fiche (the only really interactive element in the show), as one can twiddle a cursor on three antiquated monitors to watch close-up the extraordinary technical diligence involved in her mark-making. Browne has commented 'the artworks are landscapes which you experience in different time frames and dimension (moving, buzzing, flashing, focusing), which is expressed through the historical reference to the technique, rather than about it', hachure that is or 'two-dimensional splinters' which pay tribute to a 19th century military/topographical survey of Switzerland, but here's the twist, also a map covering the modern site/terrain of CERN and its Large Hadron Collider. Fragmentation too defines Mimi Joung's piece A single odour which is that of waiting (2009) a scree of broken pottery etc that spills out onto staging, debris violently displaced from the workshop and carefully composed, mania in thrall to techne.

Cornelia O'Donovan's Xerox friezes brim with visual energy, combines of hi-lighted text and rudimentary images. 'There is snow on the road I just clear it with my foot' runs one of her lines, perhaps an oblique reference to Marcel Duchamp's In Advance of the Broken Arm? Also wall-mounted are Gabriella Sancisi's C-type photgraphs of Carmelite monks, who stare out blandly as if unknown heroes of the Soviet Union, "Kit-Kat" portraits that contrast with the exuberance of Anya Beaumont's Untitled (2009) cut-outs in paper and steel. The 'Kaleid' ensemble is completed by Alex McIntyre's Aegis (2009), a little trio of carved plaster busts that invite one to take time out in an act of mute recollection.

George Unsworth talks of artists as 'highly trained observers' in the show's press release, and no doubt these would make competent UN blue berets, but that is to slightly miss the point, as the principle function of the objects presented in 'Kaleid' is as foci of individual entrapment and release, and this emerges despite the heterogeneity of the sample as its most important theme.

KALEID is at No More Grey 23-25 Redchurch St., London E2 7DJ Mon-Sun 1pm-6pm until June 28. www.mdx.ac.uk/kaleid.asp