Martin Miller
We Are Not Welcome in This House
October - December 2020

Martin Miller, whose practice infuses aspects of West-coast conceptualism with psychological tension and a mordant sense of humor, is interested in the ways we perceive, process, and internalize risk, particularly in the course of everyday life. In its conflation of the body’s internal structures with both architectural space and the subconscious, Miller’s work also nods to such influences as surrealism and the writing of J.G. Ballard.

 Cast and assembled in lower_cavity’s cavern-like project space, Miller’s precariously balanced towers of rough concrete elements simultaneously suggest ancient monoliths and the cervical architectures of the human body. Their initial impression of mass and solidity gradually gives way to a perception of dangerous fragility, with the small wooden shims that help hold the structures upright protruding like herniated disks on the verge of rupture and collapse. Meanwhile, a video projection flashes a distress message in morse code, relating a tale of minor domestic apocalypse and a missed gender-reveal party.