Reflecting a sense of black magic

The title of this exhibition, Kabibi, is Filipino for "shell", which appears to be the central motif around which it is built. It is rather heterogeneous; as well as the sculptures per se, there is a video, seen through an eyehole in a wall, which is unusually imaginative and free from the sometimes maddening repetition now chronic in this medium. (That eyehole helps too; there is something bleak about sitting dumbly in front of a blinking video in a small, confined space).

The actual sculptures involve a sort of wire or metal cage on legs, to which are added masks, small animal shapes (all in metal too) and in at least one case a small hanging human figure. Inevitably, the shell motifs appear too. There is a certain quality of taboo and black magic about it all, as though we were participating in some odd rite, while there is also a suggestion of imprisoning spaces.

Though it is consistently suggestive, the exhibition reaches out to rather more than it achieves; there is a sense of falling somewhere between the conceptual and the strictly sculptural. The sculptures themselves are interesting and imaginative in their own right, yet somehow are not quite self-contained; neither are they wholly original in their vocabulary. It may be in the area of video or installationist art that Vivian Hansbury will find her own, special territory.

Until October 5th.