Metal Bridge is not quite a group show, instead grouping the four ex­hib­it­ing artists into two pairs. The first of Sorcha Dallas’s two spaces belongs to Steven Claydon and Craig Mul­hol­land.

Claydon’s Locked Con­s­tel­la­tion (Giant) is a curious assembly of objects. A small, spiky and vaguely ar­chi­tec­tur­al geometric cage of copper tubing squats pro­tect­ively over a black disc, and beside it lies a cyborg of a spiral shell, half of it, im­pos­s­ibly, made of metal. Leaning against the wall behind these two sculp­tures is a perspex vitrine, backed with hessian, dis­play­ing a cut-out ras­ter­ised image of a statue, either praying or deep in thought, that has been haphaz­a­rdly stuffed into its enclosure. There is something about these pieces that suggests Claydon is playing a future historian and ar­chae­o­lo­gist, present­ing artefacts from our recent past and the coming times.

Craig Mul­hol­land’s in­stal­l­a­tion is similarly subtle and sug­gest­ive.

Paths of Res­ist­ance is a spiky mixed media in­stal­l­a­tion con­s­ist­ing of three tripods. The first bears a crudely-fashioned silver globe, the second an ap­prox­im­a­tion of an oil painter’s mahl stick, the linen bound up with strands of solder, while the third displays a framed work. Together, they form a sort of solar system of artistic pro­duc­tion. This theme is reflected in Reduction With Noise, a sound piece that matches strings and elec­tron­ica with an operatic refrain, repeating the phrase “What is art itself?”.

On the walls, Mul­hol­land presents a series of “paintings” - titled Broken Pain and numbered one to four - which are fashioned from aluminium, poly­car­bon­ate and thread. The scores and cuts in the metal surfaces call to mind shattered glass and pyramids viewed from above, some are anarchic, peppered with holes. Together, they might be read as a reduction and re­ap­prais­al of Vorticism or Cubo-Futurism, co-opting the dynamism of those movements, but bringing them to a sudden halt, rendering a fas­cin­a­tion with the machine age, literally, in metal.

It is good to see Mul­hol­land con­strained by a small gallery space. His last ex­hib­i­tion at Sorcha Dallas, Plastic Casino, was sited not in the gallery but in a disused sewing factory, which Mul­hol­land filled to the brim with a vast in­stal­l­a­tion con­tain­ing painting, sculpture and video work, all resting on a dizzying array of art-his­t­or­ic­al re­f­er­ences and shot through with political concerns.

In the next room, the splitting of the ex­hib­i­tion is made explicit not only by a change of space, but by an opaque white curtain covering the window and blocking the entrance. Behind it lies a striking sculpture by Thomas Helbig, Gesicht. An oversized bird, or perhaps a dinosaur, peeps out from a half-cracked egg, its face set in a rictus of struggle. It might be taken for a fossil, or a par­t­ic­u­larly violent piece of taxidermy, were it not for the explicit ap­plic­a­tion of white paint on its black surface - Helbig wants us to know that he created this still-born chimera. After the shock of Gesicht, Helbig offers a moment of calm in the form of two works on paper. Both untitled, these crayon daubs are in­com­p­lete, un­sa­t­is­fy­ing, with smudges of dull colour and half-finished lines. They might fare better elsewhere, but following Claydon and Mul­hol­land, and facing Helbig’s own sculpture, they are un­der­whelm­ing.

Duncan Marquiss’s looped video piece is, on the other hand, over­whelm­ing. Still images of abandoned buildings or caves struggle with brief shots of a white-hot furnace, while blurred shadows of human figures first dance, then fight. The piece closes with a descent into pure strobing colour, so ag­gress­ive that it becomes im­pos­s­ible to watch. Marquiss’s other work, No Vo­lun­teers Came Forward, a drawing in pencil and chalk, sees two half-clothed female figures, one blind­fol­ded, caught in an exhausted embrace.

In both works, Marquiss offers an imagined mythology - the film a creation myth, the drawing a scene from some invented epic - and it is this that ties his work together with Helbig’s, with both artists conjuring up a past that never happened.

Similarly, back in the first gallery, Claydon and Mul­hol­land chronicle skewed histories, this time political and art-his­t­or­ic­al, twisting real world an­te­cedents to their own ends.

The Metal Bridge of the show’s title, then, is not just a reference to shared materials, but to a shared sen­s­ib­il­ity rooted in the ex­am­in­a­tion of the past, real or invented. A neat cur­at­or­i­al trick, that, and one that not only casts a new gloss on the work shown, but forms a strong whole from the work of four very different artists.

This review was first published in The Herald on January 19th, 2007.