The object under scrutiny in each of Rowe’s Pre-genus works is a silver box. The focus is on the formal relations that operate within a box’s physical boundaries and beyond to its relation with its immediate surroundings. By paring back to basics and making boundaries uncertain, a level of ambiguity is introduced allowing the box to engage with three architectural ‘givens’ – walls, corners and horizontal surfaces. This establishes a kind of physical equation and visual reciprocity, outwardly with the orthogonal structures of architecture and inwardly to the boxes function, the purpose being to establish new readings of everyday objects. Innovation also lies in the way identity and autonomy are explored as we see the tools and templates necessary for the object’s creation incorporated in its configuration, and in the extreme level of deconstruction seen in these works, unparalleled in the world of silver.
Rowe showed pieces from the Pre-genus series in the exhibition ‘Raising the Bar: Influential Voices in Metal’ (2008–9), which toured galleries in England, Scotland and Wales. In his catalogue essay, Eric Turner, Curator and Keeper of Metalwork at the V&A Museum, stated that: ‘Michael Rowe applies a searing, ruthless intellectual approach to his work, giving it immense formal dignity. He is currently interested in investigating both the spatial quality and the spatial context in which his work resides’.
Individual pieces from this series have been exhibited in leading venues across Europe and Asia. These include ‘Age of Experience’, Ruthin Craft Centre and Dovecot, Edinburgh (2009), ‘Collect 2010’, and ‘Mindful of Silver’ at Goldsmiths Hall, London (2011). International dissemination included the exhibitions ‘Talking Hands: Spectrum of Contemporary Metal Works’, the Society of Seoul Metalsmiths Biennale held at Seoul National University Museum of Art (2009), and ‘Still Life’ at Galerie Sofie Lachaert, Antwerp, Belgium (2009).