You need your wits about you as you walk into Smith/Stewart’s latest sculp­tur­al in­stal­l­a­tion - a faltering step might easily end in a nasty bump to the head.

Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart - the pair have worked together since 1993 under the Smith/Stewart brand - are known for their ex­plor­a­tion of the divisions between public and private space, and this time have literally divided the rooms of In­ver­leith House, in­stal­ling in­ter­lock­ing black beams at head height.

On the ground floor, the first room is split by an off-kilter cross, echoed in the second. Upstairs, the dis­sec­tion of space becomes more complex with in­ter­lock­ing lines slicing rooms into uneven quarters.

Described like this, Enter Love And Enter Death might sound like good old min­im­al­ist sculpture, but its form is, perhaps, less sig­n­i­fic­ant than the effect it has on its audience.

That effect is a powerful one, of heightened awareness - the beams are set at eye level, and have the look of metal girders (though they are made of painted wood), and so present a very real threat, forcing careful, tentative movements, and a good deal of cautious peering over and under the beams to plot a course through them. The result is a feeling close to claus­tro­pho­bia, even though the spaces between the beams are wide, or a nervous, grown-up reversal of the abandon with which children attack a climbing frame.

This ex­ag­ger­ated sense of ones sur­roun­d­ings also applies to ever­yth­ing that Smith/Stewart have not installed. In­ver­leith House is perhaps Scotland’s most pleasing gallery, with its airy rooms, and the green light of the Botanic Gardens creeping through the windows, but at most shows, the art over­whelms the interior - with Smith/Stewart’s joists in place, every detail of the rooms is thrown into sharp focus, and views are admired with fresh eyes when it is hard to reach them. In the last room on the upper floor of the gallery, the ghosts of past in­stal­l­a­tions remain - a wall-drawing by Robert Ryman, text left over from Douglas Gordon’s Su­per­hu­man­at­ur­al ex­hib­i­tion - and Smith/Stewart’s beams grant them a fresh context, sim­ul­tan­eously obscuring and framing works that, to regular visitors at least, have long since faded into the back­ground, forcing another fresh look. At the exit, Smith/Stewart even introduce a note of humour, with a final beam placed so close to the door that leaving the work is a struggle bordering on the slapstick.

Smith/Stewart are perhaps best known for their earlier work, pitched somewhere between per­for­m­ance and video, which was concerned with the body at an intimate level, often with a violent edge (the duo have described their work, men­a­cingly, as being about ‘the things that people are capable of doing to one another’). The pair have filmed them­selves des­per­ately trying to breathe with plastic bags over their heads, for example, and made dis­t­inc­tly dis­qui­et­ing video works with cameras housed inside their mouths, looking out.

In the context of this past practice Enter Love And Enter Death, can be seen as a per­for­m­ance of sorts, as much as it is an in­stal­l­a­tion or sculpture - the di­f­fer­ence being, of course, that the artists are not the per­formers in this case, but cho­reo­graph­ers, or­ches­trat­ing the movements of their audience through the gallery spaces of In­ver­leith House, and, where once they doc­u­men­ted events with video, Smith/Stewart here document in advance, so to speak, with their sculp­tur­al forms. Much is left to chance, of course - the duo could hardly predict the ducking and weaving of visitors with any precision - but, as one stalks the gallery alone, the sense that others must have peeped into this corner, dipped low to gain access to that area, or pulled up short to avoid a collision with a certain beam, is a strong one, with the ultimate result that an encounter with Enter Love And Enter Death begins to feel like something ap­proach­ing a col­l­ab­or­a­tion, with Smith and Stewart, first and foremost, and with fellow gallery-goers past and present, too.

Without that sense of phys­ic­ally in­ter­pret­ing the work as one moves through it, the piece would be dis­t­inc­tly ag­gress­ive, less a med­it­a­tion on the con­trolled routes ar­chi­tects set into their buildings, or an in­ter­ven­tion on the existing spaces of In­ver­leith House, more a near-violent cor­ral­ling of an audience. But the idea that, albeit in some limited sense, every visitor is col­l­ab­or­at­ing with the col­l­ab­or­at­ing duo, lends the work a subtler tension, as if the usual mode of gallery behaviour - the present­a­tion and con­sum­p­tion of art - has been tran­s­formed into a dis­t­inc­tly dis­com­fort­ing dance of control and willing sub­mis­sion.

This is powerful stuff, then, a work that provokes an intense physical response, one that borders on the un­pleas­ant while also offering a genuine sense of com­mu­n­ic­a­tion between viewer and artists. That all this is achieved with the simple placement of some black beams makes Enter Love And Enter Death, which is at first sight might seem rather slight and re­pet­it­ive, a re­mark­able piece of sculpture.

This review was first published in The Herald on November 30th, 2007.