hummingbird splinter winglet hum

Sculpture shown in Tethered Fiction, at the Chelsea College of Arts Graduate Show.

2024

PRESS RELEASE:

The world's time is divided in two: on one side, the dawning future of a damaged, unlivable and unjust planet; on the other side, a fading past of imperialist hubris that still seeks growth, influence and expansion. These two timelines meet only with the impact of explosives, the combustion of fossil fuels, the heating of the earth, the cleansing of inconvenient populations. Like the hands of a clock, they lock momentarily, and then continue to glide past one another. The yawning delay between the painful reality in Gaza and the lethargic reaction of the West is not just a result of ignorance and inhumanity, but of this disconnect.

This piece explores the collective experience of inhabiting this disjunction. It begins with the pace of life embedded in the institutions in nearby Pimlico, London. In the foreground we find bland maquettes of office spaces that evoke the imposition of order through segmented time, the claustrophobic demands of late-capitalist cubicle work, and the estrangement from others. The duplicated interiors reflect our relationship to time and to ourselves: impassive and dry. We can hear the droning background hum of a water cooler.

The hands of the clock, brilliant and red, penetrate the stage sets like prophetic arrows. Upon closer inspection, piles of sawdust and rubble are illuminated from behind, making it harder to discern if the offices are in use or abandoned. The backlit glow through the windows facing the college’s Parade Ground connects the clock to the public land of Westminster, situating the sculpture at the heart of the British colonial metropole; the nucleus of history’s most powerful and violent empire.

The clock’s structure is made from interlocking flat wooden panels, able to be quickly disassembled. The design transforms the world of administration, lawmaking and economy into a dollhouse, a game of dress-up we call non-fiction. This seemingly solid structure is designed to disappear, leaving behind nothing but dust.