20 October – 16 December 2023
A new commission from RA Walden and newly acquired work by Shezad Dawood will be showing at Grundy Art Gallery as part of the Lightpool festival.
GRUNDY X LIGHTPOOL X HYBRID FUTURES
20 October – 16 December (with late night opening Friday 20 October 5pm – 7pm)
RA Walden’s the universe is a clock (i) schrödinger’s equation, time dependent (2023), has been commissioned as part of Hybrid Futures. In this work, the numerals of a clock are replaced with the different elements from an equation by the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Schrödinger. Made from clear glass and helium gas, this work brings the physical world and the world of physics together to invite the viewer to consider their own understandings of time. As we occupy bodies in their varying states of health, on a planet careening toward sickness and at a time when the future is so unknown; this work also opens up questions of clock time, sick time, and normative time-keeping.
Shezad Dawood‘s neon work, Island Pattern (2017), has been co-acquired as part of Hybrid Futures. It is informed by studies of the wave patterns in the Venice Lagoon and tells the story of a city at increasing risk from climate change and rising seas levels. The ideas for Island Pattern evolved out of conversations with Marine Engineer Angela Pomero and the chief designer at Venice’s Fortuny textile factory, Pietro Lunetta who had created a textile print using the same wave pattern data. Adding his own family history of links to the textile trade in Pakistan and the North West of England to these discussions, Dawood’s research sought to understand how the seemingly disparate subjects of pattern, migration and climate change, intersect.
Artist RA Walden and Paulette Brien, Curator at Grundy Art Gallery reveal the details behind the new work shown during Lightpool in October 2023 in this short film here.
“In bringing ‘the physical world and the world of physics together’, RA Walden invites us to consider more closely our own perception of time, how it affects us and what that means. We’re reminded that our notion of time is a construct – physicists have shown that time is variable and non-linear. And while we have been trained to experience it as endlessly flowing in one direction, it is not fundamentally real. It is both mechanism and trap. Time is money.”
Contemporary, independent arts and culture criticism since 2011, The Double Negative is a Liverpool-based magazine (online and occasional print) featuring critical analysis, interviews, reviews, essays, experimental texts and commentary on under-the-radar culture. One of The Double Negative Editors, Mike Pinnington visited the Grundy Art Gallery at the end of 2023 to view the new commission by RA Walden and you can read his response here.
