Spike Island, Bristol
8 February — 11 May 2025
Chisenhale Gallery, London
6 June — 17 August 2025
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is a major new commission by artist Dan Guthrie. Working primarily with moving image, Guthrie’s practice explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness. By deliberately experimenting with form and language, Guthrie probes the limits of visual representation – questioning not only what is shown, but what remains unseen or unsayable on screen. This exploration encompasses the politics of visibility itself, asking how race, memory, and subjectivity are shaped by the act of looking.
This new commission continues Guthrie’s long-standing engagement with the Blackboy Clock, an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in his hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire. The clock, which incorporates a wooden blackamoor figure in its design, was originally assembled by a local watchmaker in 1774, during the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Relocated to a specially constructed alcove on the front of a former schoolhouse in 1844, the clock was restored in 1977 and 2004, and has remained a constant presence in Stroud throughout Guthrie’s life.
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure presents two videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock – a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the strategic acquisition of an object in order to destroy it. Across both videos, audio description and captions reject standardised, impersonal modes of description in favour of poetic interpretation and emotionally resonant dialogue – embedding access deeply into the aesthetic and political fabric of Guthrie’s commission.
Central to this body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and its methods for doing so. Alongside this exhibition, Guthrie has developed a new online platform – earf.info – documenting the clock’s timeline, from its historical origins to current debates over its future.
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure is commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol, with support from the Henry Moore Foundation.
Click here to read the Chisenhale Gallery handout.
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Empty Alcove, 2025
Single channel video, stereo sound, 5 minutes
A proposal for a potential future. Five minutes of present-day footage of the Blackboy Clock in-situ with the figure digitally removed in post-production.
Empty Alcove was also shown at SVA in Stroud in May 2025, click here for more info.
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
Camera Operator: Holly Antrum
Sound Recordist and Sound Designer: Felix Taylor
Colourist: Nielsan Bohl
Producers: Olivia Aherne for Chisenhale Gallery, Carmen Juliá for Spike Island
Assistant Producer: Oscar Abdulla for Chisenhale Gallery
Captioning: Carefuffle Collective and Dan Guthrie
Audio Description: SoundScribe and Dan Guthrie
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Rotting Figure, 2025
Single channel video, stereo sound, 5 minutes
A proposal for an impossible future. A rendering of the Blackboy Clock figure gradually collapses whilst covered by a tarp that obscures the offensive imagery.
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
CG Designer and Animator: Salvi De Sena
Sound Recordist and Sound Designer: Felix Taylor
Producers: Olivia Aherne for Chisenhale Gallery, Carmen Juliá for Spike Island
Assistant Producer: Oscar Abdulla for Chisenhale Gallery
Captioning: Carefuffle Collective and Dan Guthrie
Audio Description: SoundScribe and Dan Guthrie
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earf.info, 2025 - ongoing
Website
An online platform which includes an interactive timeline that traces the history of the Blackboy Clock alongside new texts by Guthrie and invited contributors.
Click here to visit earf.info.
Credits
Lead Artist: Dan Guthrie
Editors: Olivia Aherne, Carmen Juliá
Assistant Editors: Rachel Be-Yun Wang and Zhejun Gao
Editorial Support: Phoebe Cripps
Research Assistants: Holly Antrum, Tommy Madison
Contributors: Tendai Mutambu, Lola Olufemi, Tatenda Shamiso, Vanessa Onwuemezi
Web Development: An Endless Supply
With the generous support of Frank Bowling and Rachel Scott.
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Press / Reviews
‘Let it rot’: artist says Stroud’s ‘racist’ blackboy clock should be destroyed
Lanre Bakare, The Guardian, February 2025
The death of Stroud’s racist clock
Harriet Lloyd-Smith, Plaster, February 2025Dan Guthrie: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure
Daniel Culpan, Art Monthly, March 2025
Danielle Dean and Dan Guthrie’s Filmic Counter-Narratives
Vanessa Peterson, Frieze, April 2025
The Best Shows to See Across the UK This Spring
Critic’s Guide, Frieze, April 2025
This Summer’s Must-See Contemporary Art Exhibitions In London, And Beyond Mahoro Seward, British Vogue, June 2025
Dan Guthrie, Chisenhale Gallery, exhibition review: ‘Fantasy of erasure’
Sarah Birch, Hackney Citizen, June 2025
Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure
Zarina Muhammad, The White Pube, June 2025