Michael Dean on his solo exhibition at Herald Street, London: Kicking Die (To Scale With a Ladder)

Michael Dean, Kicking Die (To Scale With a Ladder). Installation view. Herald St, London, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London. Photo by Jack Elliot Edwards.

By ESME BLAIR May 27, 2025

Concrete- to Michael Dean the ‘democratic ceramic’- is entirely reconfigured in his sixth exhibition ‘Kicking Die (To Scale With Ladder)’ at Herald Street. Floor becomes wall, becomes script, is a Moksha Patam* board, is snake skin, is ladder. 

The largest and most experiential of the pieces in the exhibition sees the floor scattered with nostalgia in the form of a thousand coloured plastic die; cubic and otherwise in Kicking Die (One Thousand Die). One can imagine a feed the birds-type-scene as the die were released onto the gallery floor like a juggernaut of schoolyard folly, creating a chaotic underfoot as the viewers wade and kick their way through the exhibition.

Michael Dean, Unfuckingtitled (snake and or ladder) 5, 2025. Concrete tiles, fire resistant cladding (weatherboard) and gutter, 220 x 56 x 11 cm / 86.6 x 22 x 4.3 in. Courtesy of artist and Herald St, London. Photo by Jackson White.

Deploying the colonial colour palette of red, white and blue, ladders made of concrete are scattered throughout the gallery, stacked upright. The ancient Indian game arguably now ubiquitous in households flits between order and chaos as the viewer is placed into the game, invited to roll the dice and maybe imagine scaling the walls as tiling and floor-poured concrete confuses the axes of orientation. The ladders are formed of grid structures which allude to conventional tile configuration, the skins of various snakes, as well as the composition of board games themselves. 

The show is both ludic and sincere, accompanied by an excellent press release written by Émilie Streiff. The strength of the writing on Michael’s work is fitting, reflective of his emphasis on the written word within his practice. In discussion, he said to me ‘Writing is always central to my work, often adopting the presence of a typographical informed transmutation into physical matter. Sometimes legible sometimes illegible. In the case of ‘to scale with a ladder’, a play on to scale as in to climb (reptilian dexterity) and or to scale as in a snakey dermis, the word (in a new world of emoji based communication) has become interchangeable with the icon of a ladder rendered through the abstracting geometric possibilities of a snake skin. Situating communication within the context of a proposed fatherless phenomenology inherent in an experience of nature is a continuation of my research into having one respond to the ‘text’ as though it were the world and not just the hermeneutical determinism of an author. I want writing to facilitate sovereignty and autonomy as a response to the closed codes employed by the ruling classes to frustrate socio economic diversity and mobility.’

Michael Dean, Unfuckingtitled (not to be young not to get old), 2025. Concrete tiles, fire resistant cladding (weatherboard) and marine ply, 80 x 80 x 5 cm / 31.5 x 31.5 x 2 in.  Courtesy of artist and Herald St, London. Photo by Jack Elliot Edwards.

Familiar city architecture is present in the medium of concrete, echoed in our acquaintance with the game we are faced with. The work Unfuckingtitled (not to be young not to get old) introduces a voidal perspective in the form of a spider web while mimicking the star shaped balloon in Static token. (lead balloon) which stares down from the ceiling despite, delightfully, being made from the dense usually floor-bound medium of lead. ‘These words are taken from a 1983 speech by Neil Kinnock, ahead of Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministerial appointment: ‘I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.’’** Michael portrays the futility of empty rhetoric spewed by politicians like Thatcher. We are being sucked into Unfuckingtitled’s vanishing point, along with the hopes of many of those whose lives Thatcher and figures in power before and since have altered.

Michael Dean, Static token. (lead balloon), 2025. Lead free alloy and gold chrome ribbon, 7 x 22 x 22 cm / 2.8 x 8.7 x 8.7 in (Balloon), 265 cm / 104.3 in (String). Courtesy of artist and Herald St, London. Photo by Jack Elliot Edwards.

There’s a nod to empire, the British class system, urban architecture, reptilia and phenomenology presented through the language of play. Very little could have made this show better in its allusions to the research at core, accessible to those willing to peer in. Placing a game at the centre of the exhibition worked as an offering to the viewer, becoming not just simply a making aware of one’s viewing experience, rather a beckoning to join, allowing for infinite ways to craft ones encounter of the work. The principal strength of this show- its holistic nature. Michael continued; ‘The decision to place the game ‘Kicking Die’ at the centre of the exhibition could be attributed to an attempt to implicate the viewer in an experience of the exhibition. As in society, like life, we are implicated whether we like it or not. One could argue that a lot of work doesn’t care if you exist or not. Subject to another lovely looking fucking lesson. It is closed and you can but only break it if you should be so bold as to exist differently let alone offer up some physical, emotional, intellectual contribution as an itinerant protagonist. It should matter that YOU exist as sovereign protagonist in the white pool of light page publication of the exhibition space. Trip on and or kick a die becoming a number cast on implication. What significance the number thrown/kicked? YOU tell me! At the very least on ‘kicking die’ you exist in the laughing clack of dice on a concrete floor, against the wooden wall. Poking death in the eye for breathing and bearing your body in a gallery in east London.’ 

In ‘Kicking Die (To Scale with a Ladder)’ Michael Dean succeeded in a world built, and all the better to have been openly invited. Safe to say had she still been with us, Maggie Thatcher’s invite may have gotten lost in the post…

Michael Dean, (Working Title) dream baby dream baby dream, 2025. Concrete tiles and fire resistant cladding (weatherboard), 177 x 75.5 x 4.5 cm / 69.7 x 29.7 x 1.8 in. Courtesy of artist and Herald St, London. Photo by Jack Elliot Edwards.

*‘ 'moksha patam,’ a Hindu board game thought to have originated as early as the tenth century in which players negotiate cycles of death, rebirth, and spiritual attainment, with serpents and ladders serving as karmic and virtuosic stratagems.’ - excerpt from the Herald Street press release written by Émilie Streiff.

** Excerpt from the Herald Street press release by Émilie Streiff.