Artists

Simon Denny

Press release

Simon Denny’s installation Less Stale Attachment was first exhibited in 2006 at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand. The installation was shown as part of a group exhibition called Break: Construct that invited nine emerging artists in the region to exhibit work around the ideas of experiential and environmental totality.  Drawing inspiration from the collaged environments of Dadaist Kurt Schwitters alongside Frederick Kiesler’s Galaxies, the exhibition examined how materials and their contexts are shaped by their quotidian environments. 

Less Stale Attachment marks a formative moment in Denny’s practice, shaped by a distinctive material-based approach. This early installation stands apart from the artist’s later work, which is more often associated with investigations into technology, politics, and systems of power.

Almost twenty years on, the installation accrues new associations that contribute to its material afterlife. In 2025, the rhetoric of “attachment” spans a semantic field that stretches from relationship self-help discourse to the digital file appended to an email. At its core, the work begins with the assembly and disassembly of our surroundings into forms that are comprehensible, experiential, or fantastical. The installations embodies a concern that is “conversational in nature” and that addresses how meaning and material intertwines.

At KIN, the exhibition is presented as a near-exact restaging of the 2006 installation at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Taking it back to its original form, scale, and sensibility, Denny reflects on the enduring questions that first emerged in his practice.