SPONSOR Creative New Zealand, Designworks

Trace Murdoch is a Wellington designer. In addition to furniture, he has designed and built restaurant interiors, houses, apartments, and commercial spaces, including well-known restaurants like Logan Brown, Concrete Bar, and Fork and Brewer. His show features fifteen Meranti-plywood tables of various sizes, colours, and dimensions. Some are enclosed within two large wooden boxes. Access is restricted to several viewing slots, forcing gallery-goers to see them via controlled perspectives.

Frank Stark writes, 'The things Murdoch has made here are easily enough described—they are tables, set within rooms. You cannot sit at these tables, though, nor walk into these rooms. Instead you can experience them only with your eyes, and then only from where you are allowed. They have become all context and no substance … Like a child saying the word “table” over and over again, chanting it in fact, he enjoys the sensation of something as concrete as the living room furniture becoming abstract.'

The show is presented as part of the the 360: A Full Perspective on Wellington Art programme, sponsored by Designworks.